The quiet of falling snow.
Parkas.
Snow boots.
Hearty soups.
Sledding.
Full body weekend dinners.
Cuddles to stay warm.
The delight of slightly longer days.
Snow fights with the kids.
Hibernation movies.
Roasted chestnuts.
The crunch under your feet of fresh snow.
Canada is taking Minnesota. It’s settled. Love everything about this. ‘Am I the only one seeing this?’.
📚Finished reading: Mundo Mendo by Luis Mendo. This was such a treat to start the new year on. Its the perfect book to read on a commute and I can’t wait for the next volume. It’s also definitely inspired me to collect my own writing and art into tiny little books.
Finch West LRT. Spent a considerable number of hours these last few years on this one. Plenty of anguish but glad Ryan made me make the pilgrimage to this line.
I’ve been reading Luis Mendo’s Mundo Mendo, Book One, which I have been really loving. At its very core, it’s a visual blog given form. He is of course an incredibly talented artist but the reflections and writing is in the style of a personal site, given form as a tiny little book that I get to carry with me in my jacket pocket.
This has lead me to putting the phone away on my commute to and from work and really just immerse myself in this ‘eccentric’ Spanish artist living in Japan.
This has got me thinking that a similar format for my short stories might be a really good fit. 50 words per A6 page, add some art or photos or sketches or whatever. It’s a new format for people wanting to disconnect from their phones.
I just sat there with Zane to do a simple art session. I said I was going to draw a face and he was going to draw a blob face. We just ran from there and kept going.
Inspiration exists, it just needs to find you working.
Thankfully I think I’m over the jet lag. First couple of days were rough - when I loose sleep I get mega impatient and just tend to loose my temper quickly. Had 48 hours there I am not proud of. Onwards and upwards.
🍿 Finished watching: Adolescence. What a show to ring in the new year. Incredible show but is that much more powerful for me as a father of tweens going on teens. After I watched the first episode I just had to finish it all in one go.
Every year I look to the 12 months ahead and make some insanely loft plan of the creative output that I want to achieve. Every year I make some progress, but it does always fall short of those plans. This year I think my plan is to have a set number of things that I want to achieve. I don’t need to achieve any of these, as they are hobbies, but they make me happy and publishing them at least makes it easier for me to focus on things I thought were pretty important for me.
🍿 Finished watching: Our Great National Parks Season 1. I certainly have my issues with Obama and the legacy (his support for the Israeli machine and his recent choice of words on the ‘people of Gaza’ he has left a bad taste in my mouth) but I enjoyed this series.
This site now is entering its 23rd year online. It’s wild to me that I’ve been able to make this habit stick. Micro.blog has played a crucial role in allowing me the space to do this.
My only regret is the fact that it took me a while to understand who I was ultimately writing for - primarily my future self, secondarily everyone reading this. In my early days, I was doing the opposite and it doesn’t make for great reading.
Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life
A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it. A thin desire is one that doesn’t.
Fantastic concept for framing ‘desires’. It’s funny timing, but Notes on Being a Man just went through this same concept. Scott Galloway uses a different name for it (Slowpa). I like this better - via Kottke
I like Ben’s 2026 checklist. So here is mine:
Ones that I am going to steal from Ben are:
Travelling with a family of four I’ve learnt a few important things that I need to have sorted ahead of the next trip:
🍿 Finished watching: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. This was legitimately awesome. The soundtrack wasn’t as strong as the first, but the animation was amazing, and I’ve not been excited for the next instalment of a movie since Back to the Future.
A whirlwind of a trip. If I don’t get these thoughts somewhere, they will be lost:
🍿 Finished watching: Sinners. I knew this was vampire related. I’m not a massive vampire lore fan but this had a 30 Days of Night vibe to it, except in the 1930s, mixed with blues. Great soundtrack.
Last of these photos sadly. This is Lebanese spaghetti - usually comes with pine nuts which my mother forgot this time. Instantly took me and my brother back to our home in Athens.
2025 iA Recap. Lovely recap of the year for iA. I’ve been on the fence about their notebook (because the price is insane) and haven’t dived into Presenter yet, but iA Writer is easily one of my favourite apps and that blue line always makes me smile.
Booked our ride to the airport - while it’s been amazing seeming everyone I am starting to get itchy for my own route and creature comforts. Any time you leave for an extended period of time, you get to a point that it’s time to go back. Today I felt that.
Tabouleh (Saida style). Every region does it slightly differently. The little twist here is the inclusion of cucumbers.
It’s been a rough few days with Zane and his coughing, which at night gets worse and turns to vomiting what he ate in the evening. Four days on little sleep means we are pretty agitated.
My mood is messed up and the holiday has just turned a little sour for me. It’s been great seeing family and also enjoying good food but the price we’ve had to pay is (at the moment) to high. We have four more days to go here and back on a plane. In some ways it’s moved very quickly and in others it’s moved slowly.
Here are the books I finished reading in 2025.
This year was less than last year but it was very targeted. Some wonderful books in there but Unreasonable Hospitality was my favourite book with Daytripper as my favourite graphic novel (although there was some stiff competition).
Can’t wait to see what 2026 brings.
🍿 Finished watching: Klaus. Our go to Christmas movie. It’s one of my favourite things and 6 years after its release I still laugh and am sad all over again.
Notes on Being a Man. Somehow I wasn’t aware that Scott Galloway just released a new book.
The tagline is what hits hard (emphasis mine): ‘How to address the masculinity crisis, build mental strength and raise good sons.’
Spent some time with my dad. It’s been a lifetime since we had that kind of interaction. He had to check up on his eyes, so I braved walking the Hamra.
It was fun afterwards had a little breakfast and he had his first ‘Latte’. He’s always liked milky coffee, just is used to making it using Arabic coffee and milk or a straight up frothy cappuccino.
🇱🇧 Didn’t take a photo because it was gone in seconds, but had our first chicken and lahmeh shawarma. Kids loved it as well - although not sure if they loved it more than souvlakis.
🇱🇧 Lebanon does a lot of things really well - food, culture, small family owned businesses and family.
It also does a lot of things really badly - air quality, noise, utilities (water/electricity/internet) and traffic.
🇱🇧 Chicken Masala pizza. The kinda thing you will only find here - at my brother-in-law’s sourdough bakery.
We went bowling today for the first time. They made me play with a handicap (using the smallest bowling ball) after my two strikes.
Jet lagged. Waking up regularly around 4am means I’ve been operating on some weird ass amounts of sleep at the moment. Still the quiet before the start of the day has always been one of my favourite things in the world.
Travelling for nearly 24 hours with a family of four was brutal. Nothing was particularly difficult (except the delay getting out of Toronto) but in the aggregate all the different things add up.
In the moment, when you are 12 hours into your journey and all you want to do is have a meal, shower and sleep you say things like, ‘I don’t ever want to do this again’. But once the dust has settled and you’ve regained a little bit of your composure, you begin to reflect, ‘that wasn’t sooo bad, right?’
Great. Plane has been delayed by an hour….for some auxiliary motor? From the captain:
It’s the little motor that helps the bigger motor to starts…
Yasmine’s face dropped and she was like, ‘did I need to know this? No I did not.’
It’s been a really long time since I boarded a plane. It’s been nearly 6 years since we visited Lebanon.
Packing has begun. I always start with my backpack. Necessary documentation (for a family of four), notebooks/stationary, reading material, electronics. One thing I am really looking forward to is some crazy ass blogging in the coming month.
Procreate Dreams 2 looks like a pretty massive update. I never got the first version (an oversight more than anything else), but this just shows how the team at Savage Interactive shipped something, listened and updated it to make it better.
I don’t tend to take care of my shoes very often. The whole process takes me back when I was a kid and my dad would clean all his shoes on a Sunday. I loved the buffing process. Still do. The transformation is always like a magic trick.
🍿 Finished watching: Love the Coopers. Loved this movie. Great actors, great script. Great comedy moments.
My favourite song at the moment, …Baby one more time by Tenacious D - wait what?! Even the little addition ‘hit me baby but not so hard)’ is excellent.
📚 Finished reading: Blue In Green OGN by Ram V. Borrowed this from Carl. It was an intense and claustrophobic read (which I think is the whole point). Balancing between metaphysical and psychological it was a good read but I felt the rhythm of the story was not to my own personal liking. Stunning looking book however. Colours really stood out for me.
First time I see the two new lines on the subway map. Of course, I spent a decent amount of my life working on line 6 these last few years.
For the children, there is only one rule to the game, throw Onyx off the tree. For Onyx, the rule is also simple to understand but more difficult to execute, throw everyone else before they get to him first. The sheer size of the tree is accentuated during this game as the children run along the branches, they are suddenly more aware of their own size, it distracts some, who loose their footing and fall to the ground, playing themselves out of the game.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 20 of 31 |
⚽ So Newcastle beat Everton by 4 goals, away and Manchester United can’t beat a 10 man Everton team at home. Right. I don’t even know why I bother watching United at the moment.
Came downstairs and Ryan is nattering away on his keyboards…but that sound was familiar. Of course, leave it to Ryan to hunt for the TTC theme song (the chime when a train arrives into a station) and learn it.
The wind is howling violently out there tonight. The weather is definitely locking at the moment. We had a good run this fall which lasted a little longer than expected.
While it feels like a high stakes game, it’s more about dominance against defiance. Onyx tends to keep to himself, however when confronted he refuses to cower away, even to his own detriment. The rest of the children swarm around him, but he’s wise to their advances. As quick as thought, Onyx leaps onto the tree and quickly scampers up. He allows himself a smile. The chase is on.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 19 of 31 |
Time stretches further.
The colour of the leaves on the trees has almost completely drained away.
The children are not quite adults, though their bodies have filled out and certainly look the part, their minds have still not developed to the same level. The games have become more elaborate and seemingly a little more cruel. They are chasing Onyx, who has found some success when the hunt is in the tree itself.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 18 of 31 |
Shocked, Onyx can only utter one word, ‘Why?’. The other children cannot hear him, nor do not want to. They are seeing red in a way that children can, devoid of any self control. The shove takes Onyx by surprise; he looses his balance and falls to the ground. The angry children around him begin kicking the ground at him, sand starts flying everywhere and gets into his eyes. While the pain in his eyes stings, the feeling of isolation hurts a lot more.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 17 of 31 |
🍸 Last year I went with a Black Russian as my holiday build up drink of choice. I’m back to the classic White Russian but made from Ontario ingredients this time.
I don’t usually do this, but what the hell is going on with Liverpool? I mean, 8 losses in 11 games…just incredible fall from grace. This is not slump, this is full on crisis. 🍿
🛞❄️ Winter tires went on today. Ready for the brutality that will be heading our way. So far into November it has been fine, nothing to complain about really.
It’s a mental game that I am loosing. When I finally realised the path to managing my weight better, I felt this was going to be a linear journey. It’s not panned out like that, having plateaued these last couple of months. I am definitely experiencing hunger in a different way these days, but I have noticed that this has coincided with me falling off a few very specific routines.
But its generally very clear, I am eating about what I need to maintain my weight…except it is far from where I would like to be, so the plan is to put a little bit of extra effort over the coming months. I am still keen to achieve my target towards the end of March, it’s 5 months away and completely achievable.
13 days. That’s how long it took me to find my missing glove. I’m not going to lie there were several times in these last few days that I’ve come this close to throwing that lone glove as it stared at it me every time I entered the house. Thanks to Yasmine it actually survived.
📚 Finished reading: New World by David Jesus Vignolli. This was borrowed from Carl. I’d never heard of it, but the cover and colours drew me in instantly. It’s a good yarn, drawn uniquely. I was hoping for more historical fiction but was fun.
I’ve not been able to write as much on account of the fact that I have yet another exam. This time it’s for my engineering license here in Canada, Law and Ethics. Everyone, regardless of education or experience needs to take this exam, which I can get behind. Very colloquial, very country specific. Once it’s done I can get back to something a little bit more creative.
📚 Finished reading: 7 Rules of Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer. A timely book to be reading at the moment. Some concepts you can see in practice around you, but as always it is in how you put these rules into practice.
His happiness, as small and simple as it is, was short lived. Another group of kids arrives shortly after the first group. This group is not here to admire. This group is here to control. With a single glance at Onyx’s creation they have a primal and visceral reaction. It begins with Onyx being pushed out of the way, before they proceede to collectively trampling his sand structure. Only once they are all satisfied that no element of it remained do they turn their attention to its creator.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 16 of 31 |
Today is one of those mega windy days. Totally takes me back to our time in Denmark when it was windy, rainy and grey. Ryan decided he really wanted to ride his bike. After maybe 2 minutes and a big gust of wind, he made an about turn and headed straight back home 🤣.
A small gaggle of curious kids approaches him to see what he’s built. The keep their distance but you can see a few fascinated by the way Onyx is manipulating and working with the sand and water in front of him. There is audible delight as he gently blows life into his creation, giving it a shimmering black gloss. Onyx is not used to an audience but this one time he allows himself to smile.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 15 of 31 |
🎄 It happened, the very first, ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year…’ was heard in a store today. The hotel I was at for the Healthcare Infrastructure conference put up their Christmas decorations yesterday. Feels a little early for me, but what do I know.
As he has become accustomed to this Onyx has chosen a spot further away from the rest of the children. He maintains some proximity to see what the other children are doing. It’s a mistake he will learn from. For the moment, Onyx focuses on the build in front of him. From the sand he is creating an intricate tower with sweeping curves and interconnected bridges.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 14 of 31 |
The children are older now.
Their games have become a little bit more sophisticated. They are playing in the sandbox at the foot of the tree. Some kids and grabbing the sand, giving it their colour and releasing it in the air, forming a colourful cloud of sand for an instance before falling lifelessly back on the ground. Others are building intricate structures and giving them life through colour.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 13 of 31 |
The colours manifested in different ways, some visible, some hidden. The most striking way was in the children’s eyes. For most of their infant lives, the children had smokey grey eyes. It was only when the children finally came of age and the colour of their eyes shone through. This also handily solved the question of their name.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 12 of 31 |
As time stretches forward, the colour of leaves on the tree begin to fade. The leaves never fall off but they turn a brilliant white. It’s a subtle transition that mutes the vibrancy of the remaining leaves. Like energy, the colour cannot be destroyed or lost, it simply finds a new home. The children have become the new colour bearers.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 11 of 31 |
Onyx’s experience of the game was not one of delight, it was one of exclusion and isolation. He quickly realised that the other children worked with each other to engineer him out of the way. Onyx couldn’t contain his frustrations and always found himself crying and alone, with nobody around to comforted him. It happened so often this would become his very first memory.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 10 of 31 |
🍿 Finished watching: The Fantastic 4: First Steps. This was great. The whole family loved it (including Yasmine). Even the hockey sci-fi stuff landed and obviously loved the 60s setting.
So annoyed. Left my brand new gloves in the back seat with the kids yesterday…now one pair is missing. Should know better. The back seat is the black hole of stuff. Things go there, but they may never return.
I always enjoy November, partly because I am usually writing some fiction. Writing 50-60 word chunks seems easy for me and there is momentum. Sure the final product might not be exceptionally polished but having written anything is better than not writing at all.
Maybe I get to keep things moving at the same pace once this chapter of Colours is finished. I have so many other things that I am waiting on writing.
Curiously, Onyx noticed that try as he might, the orbs did not react to him the same way they reacted to the other children. When he held an orb it didn’t change colour; rather it sat there lifelessly staring back at him. Clearly the orbs are broken, he thought to himself. That is the only possible explanation.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 09 of 31 |
One of the challenges with having an awesome library system (world class in fact) is the fact that sometimes I can borrow a mountain of books and never get through most of them. I go through different flows at the moment but I want to get one book and really get into that book, then the next.
Tickets booked to Lebanon. This is the second attempt this year. I have no idea what the criminals south of the border are up - but the vile stench from Tel Aviv wafts everywhere in the Middle East. Nowhere is safe. I just want to see my parents and family.
As with most simple games, children tend to get better at the game the more they play. First they learnt how to make the orbs glow their colour for longer. Eventually they learned how to keep the colour in the orb after they had passed it onto the next child. Seeing their colour in the orb started off as a feeling of delight, this soon turned into something more primal, existential.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | Garden | 08 of 31 |
As the orbs were passed around Onyx found himself being excluded from the game. At first it was subtle, the other children would pass the orb to Onyx and then quickly take it away. This quickly shifted to more direct actions, as they would skip his turn entirely. This eventually turned to pushing and shoving Onyx out of the way.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | The Garden | 07 of 31 |
📚 Finished reading: Daytripper by Gabriel Ba and Fábio Moon. I couldn’t put this down. Released 15 years ago, it’s an Eisner winner and I’ve never read it. One of the very best comic I’ve read this year and I have read some seriously outstanding books.
Even at this early age, the rest of the children observed Onyx differently. The difference wasn’t in the colour of his skin, as no child was alike in that regard. The common trait between the children was the colour of their eyes. At this age, they were all as white as snow. By contrast, Onyx had eyes as black as night.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | The Garden | 06 of 31 |
The orbs offered the children an object of pure wonder. The game they played simply involved passing the orbs to each other. Every time one of the children held the orb it would change colour, unique to every child. The colour would shine for a few seconds before gradually fading away, returning to its empty vessel form, ready to be awakened again by another child.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | The Garden | 05 of 31 |
The golden era of Vertigo Comics ended around a decade ago. DC have decided to bring it back this year. The thing is there is an absolute treasure trove of incredible books that were created that I know I have not engaged with by some excellent writers.
The only thing that you could count on with Vertigo, like HBO is the new voices and artists you had not heard of that were about to produce magic. For this alone, I hope that the new venture is successful for the. If it’s not, the back catalogue has enough to engage me for at least another decade.
As babies, the stream of milk which flowed from the tree itself and was all the nourishment they needed. As they grew, they needed more than sustenance. They needed an environment that encouraged experimentation, that allowed ideas and skills to be tested. The Garden provided tools of engagement. As infants the first of these were the orbs. Small lifeless bulbs that turn to life as soon as a child held one.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | The Garden | 04 of 31 |
The Garden’s sole purpose was to provide the children with an environment to play and grow. The Garden provided the children with everything they needed to take care of themselves. The Garden provided the children with the best environment for them to grow with complete autonomy as there were no adults.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 03 | The Garden | 03 of 31 |
Part 1 of my new series of articles have been written - at least as a first draft. That’s twelve concise articles on how to enter the construction industry in a position and role that you will thrive in. It’s been great getting back into writing on a regular basis - roughly 20-30minutes a day. Sunday mornings is when I like to polish my 500 words. I’m not holding myself to any schedule (so sometimes I do it and sometimes I don’t).
My genuine hope is that I will be useful to those just leaving University and trying to enter the job market.
As much as I hate daylight savings in the spring, I love it in the winter. This is the good one where we are given for the only time ever, the literal gift of time.
The tree was at the centre of a rich and elaborate garden that had formed around it. The garden was overflowing with a seemingly infinite selection of fruits, nuts and vegetables. Milk and honey flowed from the tree into separate ponds. And within all of this colourful beauty, children roamed freely.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 02 | The Garden | 02 of 31 |
The tree stood tall and proud against everything around it. The base of the tree was so thick it would take a full day to walk all the way around it. The trunk, which snaked upwards twisting and branching out in every direction. The foliage that covered the tree was thick, exploding with colour.
| Title | Chapter | Chapter Title | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colours | 02 | The Garden | 01 of 31 |
Every November I try and get some fiction written. It’s a small win for me as it flexes very different kind of muscles for me. This year I am going to be publishing the third chapter of my Colours series that has been sloshing in my head for over two decades. Eventually I want to add spot illustrations for this thing.
Affinity (by Canva) is a reimagining of the old Serif Affinity suite of apps in one single place. Really not sure what to make of it all. I loved it previously that I paid for a kick ass product and knew where I stood. You make good stuff. I give you money and the cycle continues. This feels weird. Software this polished and this good should not be free. Right?
⚾️ Yesavage is our favourite player. Mainly because of the awesome name, but turns out he’s and awesome pitcher as well. Bonus.
📚 Finished reading: Starve Vol. 2 by Brian Wood. A solid ending. The characters really grew on me. The premise was really fun. The artwork was excellent in that grimy Vertigo comics way.
⚾️ After a crazy ridiculously long ass game yesterday, we’re back even on this one and playing back home. Bring it home Blue Jays.
The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
— David Viscott ✱
✱ Although regularly misattributed to Pablo Picasso.
First properly cold day of the year…and I’m kinda here for it all. Think I’m going to make a butternut squash chilli.
Sorted a Contact form that hopefully won’t get relentlessly spammed.
Toronto pride is in full swing. Everyone in the city is wearing some Blue Jays merch of some description. I’m not there yet, considering I love baseball movies, but really feel underwhelmed by baseball games, but I love the city wide sentiment — something extremely North American about this.
I get it now. Creamy keyboards. It’s not something you can express in words. You have to experience it to understand. Having weighted keys that offer a tiny soft clack is next level typing. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get into this world.
I feel a fool for not just getting Keyboard Maestro earlier in my Mac life. I’m still kicking the tires, but can’t wait to really do some cool things with this app.
🍿Finished watching: Love Is Blind Season 9. Yasmine and I started watching this during Covid and have continued. This season was rubbish.
🍿Finished watching: Reunion I actually really enjoyed this movie. Had enough character as a comedy and who done it to keep me engaged.
Oh no. A couple of the guys got some mechanical keyboards at work and now I’ve found myself hunting on Amazon for different kinds. The Nuphy Air 75 (with Cowberry switches) looks like the one for me…for this evening. Tomorrow might be a different story.
Of course Brian Wood would have a newsletter. What’s more interesting however is that he’s publishing stories in a serialised format right there. Fire hose, but I’m here for it.
📚 Finished reading: Starve Vol. 1 by Brian Wood. Vertigo comics might be dead (without Karen Berger), but this book would have fit right into that catalogue. Brilliant series. Art is wonderful, characters are well thought out and the story moves along nicely.
🍿Finished watching: Silo Season 1. Great show. So strong in fact as soon I finished watching this I went and read the books, which are truly incredible.
🚗 Can’t believe it’s been an entire year since we bought the car. We went for nearly 5 years without one - several of which were covid years. 6000km driven this year….not a whole lot really.
🍿 Finished watching: The Wild Robot. Great movie. Hadn’t heard of it but totally exceeded my expectations.
Inktober 2025/15.
Be still my beating heart, I get to draw my characters from below or above without breaking into sweats!
Inktober 2025/14. My characters in actual perspective - where I kinda know what I’m trying to do. Long way to go, but first steps and all that.
It’s not every morning your meeting gets cancelled. It’s a great day for a short walk and you stumble upon something relatively serene in the city of Toronto.
Perspective drawing has eluded me for the entire time I have been drawing. I have spent plenty on books and tried watching videos but never invested in an actual course that looks to teach me these fundamentals in a manner that I can use again and again. I’m actually really excited to be able to take my art to the next level, because I feel this is one of those skills that unlocks whole new worlds for me and finally what’s in my brain can be translated onto paper.
Definitely going to be posting things as I go along so that I can track progress.
Finished watching: How to build a MotorCar S1E1, Episode 1 🍿. This was about building a Bentley. Ryan is heavily into cars at the moment. I think Drive to Survive is next.
Never heard of Proko before. Now I’m looking into the Perspective Fundamentals course to get my artwork to the next level.
📚 Finished reading: We Need Your Art by Amie McNee. One of the most important books I have read. I do wish that I had this book 20 years ago because it would have helped frame a lot of what I am going through better. I’m very thankful it exists and recommend it to anyone with a creative endeavour.
I recently visited Jason Santa Maria’s website. Couple of important points of note. You can download his book On Web Typography directly from the home page. It’s a timeless piece of writing if you’re interested making better websites. The other thing I wasn’t aware of was the fact that he is now creating his own typefaces. Citywide looks great.
Inktober 2025/12.
Not every day I create a new character but there is momentum with sketching something (anything!) every day.
400th post this year.
When I think back across the years where there was friction to posting to my site it makes me sad because there are so many wonderful moments that I didn’t record.
Your site is such a wonderful gift to your future self fill it with fun stuff recording your moments to relive and remember later on.
It’s Thanksgiving weekend (Canadian edition). I do love this time of the year and this holiday does generally come at a good time for a little reflection and a little resetting just before the brutality of winter kicks in. Going to try and get some reading, writing and drawing done.
📚 Finished reading: Goliath by Tom Gauld. I love Gauld’s aesthetics and the story was…an interesting flip.
It’s that time of the year and colours they are popping. I wonder if one’s life mirrors that of a tree and you get moments of brilliance after middle age.
🍳 Pastitisio. I’ve not made this in years. It all came together really well. Reminded me of home in Greece. Did a light cucumber, tomato, onion and basil salad. Chef’s kiss.
Looking to start my Stet newsletter up again, but with a pretty different type of writing about the built environment. When I started I was using Buttondown but then moved to Substack hoping that would be a better fit (this was pre-Nazis on that platform). Had a look at Buttondown again and it’s looking better now with some cool new features. Also at $7/month that’s good value.
Been listening to Mariah Carey’s Someone’s Ugly Daughter album (not officially released, but 3 seconds of internet search and you can easily download it). Completely of it’s time. Would easily sit next to a Hole album or 4 Non Blondes. Love it.
I’ve been collecting watches for 7 years now (I buy one watch a year). My latest purchase fits my current lifestyle a lot. It’s a JPM Seiko with a solar movement, aligned to the atomic clock. Don’t really have the energy (inclination) to constantly tweak the time or date. This thing just stays correct on its own. My favourite is if I’ve put it away for a weekend (because it’s a more dressy watch) it all magically realigns itself, date and all.
Trump and Netanyahu agree new US peace plan for Gaza. No comment, but you can have an emoji 🖕🏻.
The internet and social media is hopefully meant to enrich you in ways you might have been completely oblivious to. @manton’s sent me down the Richard Williams rabbit hole. Interestingly his book The Animator’s Survival Kit is available on the Internet Archive. Not sure if that’s a legit thing.
America At Its Breaking Point. I love Trevor Noah, but much more from this podcast than when he was on The Daily Show. The episode with Ezra Klein was fascinating and the perfect thing for a Sunday afternoon.
It’s not every day you see a bat flying around in the park. I’ve drawn these things countless time in my childhood but never seen one before - at least not that I can remember. Previously I would have been in awe, now I’m thinking get away from me diseased thing :).
Finances are a dirty business to get into. I will make sure I give the boys sound financial advice that they understand and can implement easily because it’s a massive mental overhead when you make the wrong decision.
The trains exits the tunnel and rides the bridge crossing the Don Valley. Out in the distance, like a painting I see rows of trees, layered behind each other slowly fading away, thick from the morning rain. It feels like autumn.
Is America About to Win the Nuclear Fusion Race? Loved this video because anytime I hear about new ways to generate electricity I am reminded that it truly is our best way out of our climate change hole.
I’m putting this in here to remind Yasmine that the summer (or hot and sunny weather) does extends well into September. It’s not guaranteed but it happens. Still in shorts and t-shirts.
New book. New pocket notebook. Been a while since I used a Moleskine. Love the fact I customise the cover to whatever I want.
New park in Toronto. Chilling with other parents (Carl, Amar and Christine) in glorious sunshine - not many more of these days left before Winter starts to kick in.
Signboard is a kanban app that writes Markdown files by Colin Devroe. I can confirm that this thing loads up quickly. For a good while I did use the Obsidian plugin (and loved it). Maybe I’m just not into this style of productivity any more?
US casts 6th veto at United Nations over war in Gaza. American Zionism at its very best.
I have been slowly building my drawing muscle again. Drawing a character from every angle for a few months until I can draw them with my eyes closed.
Shutter Declutter. I need to save some space on my machine, clearly 250GB is no longer what it used to be (which is nuts to me). Photos are an easy target and this looks like a small strokes fell big oaks kinda app.
I’ve not been keeping track (15 years ago I linked to Dominic ’s Biolab Disaster) but a few years ago it seems that some of the original source code for WipeOut was leaked and he’s rewritten it into a web based game….and it is faithful to the original. Easily one of my favourite racing games ever.
reMarkable Paper Pro Move. Great overview/infomercial for the new remarkable tablet. But at $800 (Canadian) for the exact same setup as the video, that is a very pricey device. You can shave a little with a simpler stylus, but a case is essential.
Israel are like rabid dogs just attacking everyone. These assholes need to be stopped. Real human beings will never stop supporting Palestine. You cannot wipe the Palestinian people you colonial psychopaths.
This is a rationalisation about people and their personalities. It is about how their personalities are tied to seasons of their lives. First, an explanation of Seasons as it relates to a person.
When a person is born they are in the Spring of their lives. They have youthful energy. Everything that surrounds them is burns brightly. They have an explosive energy that is infectious. They grow quickly and without much care of consequences.
As they enter the Summer of their lives they have grown to full bloom. They will never be as strong physically. They are at their peak beauty.
As they enter into the Autumn of their lives there is a clear understanding of who they are as a person. While they still have energy, it is not the same vibrant energy that they had perviously. Typically there is a bright and sadly final flash of energy demonstrating everything that they can be .
Finally when they enter the Winter of their lives, things begin to slow down. The world and their horizon become infinitely shorter. They must make way for the next generation after them.
Oftentimes however, more often than you think, people tend to skip or stay in one of their seasons indefinitely. This tends to explain why some people are forever youthful even in their old age and why some kids might seem to be wiser beyond their years.
The Unlikely Way. Absolutely love this ad. Love it so much. It’s got that same quirky energy of a 90s Levis add that we would honestly wait to watch again and again.
Spain’s PM Sanchez announces sanctions to pressure Israel to end war in Gaza. Super proud of the Spanish government for making a clear stance against the Israeli criminals. We need as many governments to join.
🍳 Made some chicken souvlakis - Ryan’s absolute favourite. Yasmine was on oven fries duty. Quick marinade although I think this thing would have been next level if it had been marinated overnight. Next time.
Finally got around to watching Superman with the family. Great 70s vibe to it. Great portrait of Israel as the evil government (along with IDF style troopers). Krypto was amazing. Jimmy Olsen was a standout character.
An E-bike for the Mind. I really loved Makoism’s summary (where I got the original link from):
AI should be really viewed as ‘Augmented Intelligence’ instead of artificial intelligence.
I haven’t taken a tumble in a really long time. Decades. But tripped while rushing to get the kids back to school today over some pavement works, scraped myself in four different locations. I’m getting too old for this shit.
I don’t tend to link back to my own stuff, but this post from 20 years ago made a real impression. I don’t know who Housy is. I don’t have any recollection of this trip in any way whatsoever.
The magic of having your own site which all your thoughts across a lifetime is unearthing gems like this. Best thing I’ve read today.
Big cooking morning! Bolognaise. Pizza dough. Coconut chickpea curry. And made a quick salad for myself for lunch. Family meals done for 6 days in one morning. I want to make it into a habit to cook for the week on a Sunday and get it all ready to go whenever.
Damn, you loose it so quickly. 1 month of doing my 5 Tibetans every day allowed me to get to 21 reps easy. 10 days on holiday and I’m struggling to get to 17 reps.
🍳 Greek Lamb Shanks. Auto pilot. Great meal to come back home to after a second from final trip to the pool.
Last day of August. Just getting the house in order before the start of the new school year for the kids. Bit nervous for them as it’s a new school. Hopefully it will be a good one for them.
🐝 Yellowjacket season in Ontario is soo annoying. These things are out in force and really aggressive. Sitting outside is a roulette for getting stung
Spent the last few days unsubscribing from a million newsletters (mostly from companies I bought something of once). Now my inbox is much quieter.
While I do lament the end of summer, we’re coming up to my absolute favourite month of the year, September. Where it’s not too hot and not too cold, it’s the goldilocks of weather and the start of a ‘new school year’ brings opportunity in a way the fabricated New Year’s eve does not.
Just got my first Starbucks in Canada (ran out of coffee beans). Totally not worth $8 for a cappuccino. I won’t be partaking ever again
Trying something a little different.
My main site is all about my life and what I am up to. A cross between a journal and a record.
I do like the act of posting about cool stuff and my general interests in the world. A distillation I guess of my tastes in website form.
Enter Collections (working title for now). Plan is simple. A sentence (or two), a link and an image. Will be messing around with the design at some point (if it sticks).

This year, it’s all been about the yellow. Started off with my Kobo cover, but extended to my iPhone cover and the site.
Last real sunny day of our holiday. It’s been a little hit and miss these last 10 days which has been pretty annoying. When it’s been sunny it’s been amazing. Tomorrow bring another rainy day and then annoyingly 1 week of bright sunshine, after we’ve bloody left. I guess you can’t control the weather (ever). If we come back here it will be earlier in the season.
📚 Finished reading: Catwoman: Lonely City by Cliff Chiang. This was excellent. Can’t remember when I last read a Catwoman story but it was decades ago. Cliff Chiang isn’t a creator I’ve spent much time with but I’ve always heard great things about. It’s like a Dark Knights Returns but for Catwoman. The art and character designs are a real treat.
📚 Finished reading: Odessa by Jonathan Hill. I loved the two tone art (going to be leaning into this more). Story was very engaging and fun read for the summer.
In line for at least one hour to get some Shake Shack. It’s been 7 years since I’ve had one which is the only reason I’m doing this to myself - and because Ryan is super excited as well.
Summer has become my opportunity to reflect on the year that passed and where I am in life in general. Looking back, 2024 was a tough year on many different levels. This continued into early 2025 and I’m only recently coming out of this fog and am in a better place in many different areas which is encouraging.
This is one of those areas that is incredibly significant for my overall wellbeing and life in general. 1 month ago, a switch turned off in my head. It wasn’t subtle it was instant and my hope is that I will be able to maintain it indefinitely.
Since then I have taken control of what I consume and when. In this limited time period I have been able to loose 5kg, which is the easy ones I feel. Having said that I am not in a rush. My body has been dealing with having an overabundance of calories for seemingly at least a couple of decades.
Truth is I have never had the body that I always wished for. I am essentially looking for healthy insides and outsides to make doing things with my family a pleasant affair, both now and into the future.
I have been doing my Five Tibetans and have enjoyed the process immensely. It’s a small lift and honestly I can tell that it is better than not doing anything.
I read my post from 5 years ago and it’s a little disheartening because I know what happened next after I had then lost 10kg. I completely fell off my No-S diet because of work stress and never came back until 1 month ago.
Last year I took complete control of 90% of my finances. It was one of the most liberating actions I’ve taken. My only regret is not acting earlier and it’s something I certainly had some control over, but I decided to outsource. A lesson for sure, and one I can certainly pass over to my kids. Read A Simple Guide to Wealth and don’t rely on a financial advisor from Dubai.
I can take control of a further 5% (the rest is in pension schemes I have no real control over), which I absolutely plan on doing even though I am going to be loosing some further money.
This took a beating. Apart from writing to my website and the occasional small piece of art, this year was one of my lowest creative output years in over a decade. I fell off the wagon and it took me reading We Need Your Creativity (at least the start) to kick start this again.
I’m in a good place on all thing Stet. I’m 6 posts into the new season which I hope I will start publishing at the start of 2026. More importantly however I have the right setup that I can see myself continuing through this process as long as it remains fun for me.
One area that I do want to add to my general activities is drawing. I have the projects, the art tutors (aka books) that can make me a better artist. I have all the gear. I just need to dedicate 10-15min a day to build that muscle.
This has gotten much better. More satisfying as I have learnt to let go of certain things and embrace others. I feel like I have a lot more to give but the environment around me is one that allows me to give more.
One area that has not been in a good place has been my emails, notes and timeblock planning. They have been in complete chaos this last year and I want to get back to a place where I control these again.
This dial has been on life support for the last few years. It has slowly increased a little bit in the last year but I can certainly do more in this area. Hopefully seeing my family this December.
My hobbies can be listed as follows:
These are all being fed a different times and in different capacities. I’m happy with how these are generally going and I look to add a couple of experiences or pieces to my collection.
🏖️ Tomorrow marks the last dog day of summer. Love the term but never realised which days it signified.
Seeing CDs being sold just takes me back to when music was a physical object that somehow enhanced the listening experience.
I’ve been on a little upgrade kick these last few months. Back in Dubai I bought this tiny Mi speaker that was better than it had any right to be for the price. It last a decent amount of time (and still works). Upgraded to a Roam 2 speaker and this thing honestly is tiny but fills the room with crisp tunes.
The last embers of summer. In Southern Ontario the seasons are totally distinct. The summer will be winding down next week where it is no longer this blistering heat. Still outside weather for sure but the heat and bite is gone by Sunday.
I don’t usually complain about the weather but I felt it was much shorter this year than I would have wanted in general.
Just finished watching Kpop Demon Hunters and actually enjoyed it…even though it was a musical (I notoriously dislike musicals).
Field Notes 50 Anniversary Desk Ledger. This was really a fantastic piece of design. I loved it and would have kept it in its plastic if I had this pdf to see all the goodies inside.
The kids finally saw a real live Capybara. They’ve been talking about these things all winter (and singing about them).
Sadly we had to take Cookie back. Our eldest developed an allergy to her (puffy eyes, sneezing and a cough). As much as it broke our hearts giving her back it was the only call. Great dog, with an awesome temperament and just pleasant to be around.
📚 Finished reading: Now Let Me Fly by Ronald Wimberly. I’d never read or heard of Ron Wimberly. Not a prolific writer/artist but this is his most comprehensive works and I absolutely loved it.
I really enjoy what I do, but there can be too much of a good thing. Summer holiday begins today. Just turn off and recharge.
Important day for our family. We got the latest member, a three month old Havanese doggy. She’s an incredibly chill dog. Incredibly well natured. Expect a ton of photos.
I couldn’t bring myself to read Tigana in printed form. It’s set in Times New Roman, and the ink was bleeding into the page just annoyed me. So instead got myself a Kindle version. Quick search and I found that it was also available on the Kobo (for the same reduced price). Might look into getting a bigger Kobo because you can tell the difference between two.
Time to reconsider my notebook situation.
A general Lifebook is essential in my life. What I am now considering is actually combining my Lifebook and projects related book into one. They don’t necessarily need to be separate. I have a few more pages left in one of the notebooks will finish that off and then consolidate into one.
No idea why I haven’t done this which is to have a single sketchbook notebook. Fill it up with everything. I did this a few years ago and loved the output but somehow decided (foolishly) to create a Moon Racket! only sketchbook. That’s going to change. Back to paints and inks and all sorts of randomness in there for the sake of just letting my mind go a little.
Finally, moving away from my B6 slim journal into the Hobonichi 5 years is going to be interesting as it’s a few lines a day. If I feel the need to write more (which is not very regularly), there is a free page for that.
At work this has honestly gone to shit. Total and utter shit. I continue to jot things down in my A5 notebook, except I do it poorly and without a view to extract information at a later date. I need to be more purposeful in how I use this notebook.
Part of an early birthday present to myself, finally got another Hobonichi product, this time one that will hopefully last me 5 years and be a place to pile in my short missives.
Welcome to Carrington. Great video with insight from some of the key people at MU. Hopefully this translates to success on the pitch.
Honestly someone explain to me what that trophy crap that Tim Cook/Apple handed to the 🍊 is all about? Low Tim Apple, very low.
🍳 Burgers & Fries.
Recently I found out what I was doing wrong with the burgers all this time - meat grind was non-existent. Did double patties for the first time ever. Was epic.
What a solid couple of weeks for creating new habits that are sticking. I usually don’t like to add to much new stuff because it inevitably means that something will fall off. This last couple of weeks I’ve added the following:
I can’t fully see the results of my exercise (as little as it is), but the writing has gone to essentially writing one 500ish chapter/article per week. This subtle progress allows me to extrapolate both new habits together. I’m excited to see the results in 3-4 months.
We got rid of Nazism.
We got rid of South African Apartheid.
It’s time we get rid of Zionism.
Zionism has become the successor to these abhorrent, nasty and inhuman ideologies.
And none of them have a place in the civilised world.
At the rate that I’m going, I hope to be around my target weight and body shape by March 2026. That’s 8 months from now. My brain is there already, it’s just going to take my body a little while to catch up.
🍳 Coconut and Chickpea Curry.
Love the ingredients on this. Simple vegetarian dish that hits all the right notes. Used green beens rather than spinach this time but worked just as well.
It’s been a little over one week with my new relationship with food and exercise.
I don’t want to call it diet, because that implies that I will revert to form after I’ve maybe reached my ‘target’.
I can absolutely feel the difference and the scales are certainly confirming the difference - while modest overall, is a major shift for me as I have genuinely struggled to reach just this point for seemingly years. I am genuinely excited to track the changes week on week.
Have I missed anything during this time? Not a thing. I’ve enjoyed every main meal that I have had. Breakfast feels light and lunch doesn’t have the same ‘heaviness’ ever again. Cutting out bread from every meal really wasn’t that hard - I now have it as part of a special meal on weekends.
I thought my five Tibetan exercises would be more difficult, but again, using the water boiling for my coffee means I get an awesome gift of coffee after I’ve completed the exercises. I do lunges when I make afternoon coffee.
It’s taken me a while, but I finally ‘get’ how to use ChatGPT for myself, beyond just a curiosity. As expected these LLMs are getting better. The best way to think of them is actually that they are an assistant at the moment. They’re not brilliant, but they do a serviceable job. Over time, they might take over complete tasks (which is scary but also kinda exhilarating).
🍳 Butter Chicken.
Honestly what was missing was some fresh naan, but ran out of time today. Also fresh cream in the sauce would have been amazing but I went extra with the butter. Aromatic rice. Guelph Wellington IPA pairing. Listening to an amazing 90s set list. Classic Friday night with the family.
I just finished writing the first chapter of my new book, A Simple Guide to the Construction Industry. This is the new chapter of Stet.
I took a good while off to regroup my thoughts and efforts and reassess what I want to do with the project. It’s one of my favourite things that I have created and want to continue creating for it, just not in the way that I had started.
I’m probably 6 months away from starting to share anything, but as long as I can continue at this steady pace I think I will have something to share.
Also I really missed working in iA Writer, but my new favourite feature is the proofreading option on MacOS, which is part of Apple Intelligence.
The Hopeful Romantics. That’s two from two from Howey. He very well may have helped change my life - I will certainly be writing more about this in the coming months is true. But with this post he’s definitely helped me deal with the misery in Palestine. Incremental things. Do as much as I can.
It’s nearly been one week since I started my new ‘life’ as someone healthy. Howey is completely correct, it is 50% a mental game. Something in your brain has to switch for you to find a gear in anything that you do. Even something as difficult as changing your body. I’m shocked at how easy it’s been to remove carbs for 70% of my meals. I’m also shocked that I no longer crave any snacks, whether throughout the day or in the evening. For years this has been my achilles heel but once I worked through the mental game, poof, it’s gone.
It’s still very early days and so the impacts of all the little cuts and additions to my routines have yet to yield any visible output (I never expected them to), but I’m invigorated by what the future holds. 1 month from now. 2 months from now. 6 months from now.
🏊♂️ Parenting point unlocked today. Ryan finally was swimming in the pool without any assist. Didn’t think it would be so quick but the boy only took 3 weeks of regular swimming and he’s now swimming from one end of the pool to the other. Proud moment and totally worth the effort to get him here.
Fleuss Chronograph SpongeBob SquarePants Eyedial. Spinnaker watches is killing it with their cartoon character releases. These things are so well designed and at a great price point as well. Just really fun to see what they come up with next.
I’ve heard of this state. A switch flips in your head and it becomes your way of life. This happened to me 3 days ago. I do know what instigated it and what finished it off. The brain is the ultimate tool. Given the right types of prompts it will allow you to do things. Given the wrong prompts (or no prompts at all) and it will continue to meander. I’m not even concerned about falling back into bad habits, because my brain has been rewired. Willpower is not actually what is keeping this together. It’s my new way of life.
How To Make Better Burgers. I have generally honed my burger making to a level I am happy with, except as it relates to the patty itself and bloody shrinkage. This video explains why my burgers have always sucked and it’s all down to the burger and the grind. Guess I’m getting a KitchenAid meat grinder attachment.
🇨🇦 I fucking love Toronto in the summer. It’s got the right balance of hot and cool going. It’s a time to make the absolute most out of the incredible Toronto Public Library system. Pools/beaches are open across the city. Good vibes all around.
For years I have know that the secret to getting trim, fitting into your favourite clothes and general long term health is down to the food you eat. Not sure where my brother heard this but I got it off him:
Diet begins in the kitchen.
I honestly thought that the No-S Diet was the thing for me, but turns out it was only the start of the journey (or at least that is where I am right now). One of the biggest concepts that the No-S diet gave me was the no sugar and no snacking. Even though it did talk about being in the right mental state for things I lost my way.
A switch has been flipped in my brain this week. It wasn’t revolutionary but clearly I am someone who likes things framed in a certain way so that I can get onboard. The feel of hunger is ok. There is an abundance of calories waiting for me to consume just a few meters away from me. Clearly for much of my life to my detriment.
Taking control of my food in my mid 40s is a little late but I can see how this might define the quality of my life in later years. I’m in the worst shape of my adult life at the moment (in my teens I had an obese phase), but the truth is the barrier to fix that is actually relatively low, I’ve just never been able to course correct since I got married — not blaming Yasmine, but it’s only natural that mealtimes and meals become more important when you become a couple.
Simples:
The Five Tibetans . So I read Hugh Howey’s article about health and fitness, which lead me to his short, which lead me to the above video about the daily exercises to carry out and I think this whole journey will help me better understand my own body and how I can get healthier.
The Secrets of Unreasonable Hospitality. If you need more incentive to go read Unreasonable Hospitality, this short video with Will Guidara from a few months ago should be enough to get you over the line.
📚 Finished reading: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara.
Easily my favourite book of the year so far. Great book. Very well written. Flowed incredibly well and ultimately told a fantastic story weaving how to manage people, life lessons from a father that wasn’t my own. Even though the fine dining scene is most certainly not my own, it was like reading the book the show The Bear was based on. Highest possible recommendation.
I’m so thankful for Mehdi Hassan, taking no fucks from absolute scum like Dershowitz. Anyone defending the Israeli psychopaths (and those funding/supporting) need to be called out daily. I couldn’t do it, but I’m glad Mehdi has the presence of mind to tackle these assholes constantly and regularly.
🍳 Fish and Chips.
This one was by special request from Ryan. Both the fish and the fries turned out great - fries and fish we crunchy. Tartar sauce was too loose. I ended up adding a full red onion. Should have gone for half and maybe squeezed out the juice. Also too much lemon juice.
In restaurants — and in all customer-service professions — the goal is to connect with people.
— Will Guidara
It’s a muggy summers day today in Toronto. I like feeling this way in contrast to what winter brings.
Run out of space on your Mac? External storage explained… . Got a message today that I was running out of storage. This video is the perfect primer to understanding the options available to me.
Gawd the neighbours are annoying. Their ill placed external unit which first turned on at the start of May. Their yappy little dog. They’re annoying conversations that I can’t hide from because they’re too loud. It’s all unwanted noise pollution.
Honestly, I am soo bored and exhausted of the 🍊 and the bullshit that comes along with him. Tariffs on. Tariffs off. Epstein list on. List off. Atrocious foreign policies. Ineffectual diplomacy. What you get when you put someone fundamentally ill suited for a role. Thanks ‘Merica!
I’ve been dipping my toes into using AI slowly. My first foray was in text descriptions for photos. It’s something I have very little interest in doing but would love to. Solved. Recently got it to help me do some coding and actually worked through Hugo version number issues and even bugs!
Took the family to watch Jurassic World. It was ok, except I was not that into the mutant dinosaur thing - tbh the whole movie is really not my thing, but Yasmine is a massive Jurassic Park geek and got everyone t-shirts. I’m looking forward to the new Tron and Superman movies this year.
I’m reading The World in a Grain of Sand and this quote really frames what the book is about:
Without sand, we wouldn’t have contemporary civilisation. And believe it or not, we are starting to run out.
📚 Finished reading: Essex County by Jeff Lemire. Absolutely wonderful book. 500 pages of pure greatness. I’m also super happy to have read this book while living in Canada. Just makes it all hit that much harder. Get a copy this summer, you won’t be disappointed.
Was looking for a way to export my highlights/annotations from my Libby/Overdrive borrowed books. Couldn’t see a way. Quick search and it’s a simple bit of text to unlock an existing feature. No idea why this isn’t just a default setting — a slightly nicer looking place for your annotations is kobli.me.
📚 Finished reading: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
I love that there is a Cardinal living near the house this year. I get to see him a few times a week. So rare and such a dude.

One of my many vices is that I do enjoy collecting books. Most of the times I read them. Sadly sometimes I do not. I might remember how important a book was to me as it provided something very specific to me that has lasted me many years after I read it. The book changed the way I think. Sometimes the story haunts me years, even decades after I read it. This is the very best stuff. The canonical stuff.
Amongst a wide range of ‘adulting’ activities carried out this week, I have managed to review my personal collection to try and pair it down to only the very best. One idea that I am considering is a single book, the best work by any individual artist, writer, designer, philosopher. There will be the occasional writer that gets an additional book here or there, but there is always one that stands above the rest. Of course I have a range of digital books. These I feel infinitely less pressured to culling. Being able to look at a shelf of books and know ho much they mean to you because they helped you grow as a human.
Honestly, the BBC’s biased and bullshit coverage of the genocide in Gaza can fuck right off. Take any shred of credibility, douse it in gasoline and torch it. Bunch of hacks.
Hermétique Summer from Baltic Watches is a a great collection of colours to add to this solid design. Love all the new colours (except the pink which isn’t for me). I can easily see myself rocking the turquoise, yellow or orange versions.
The Fairphone (Generation 6).. Not in the market for a new phone (my iPhone 15 Pro easily has 3 more years in the tank…at least), but if I was in the market, honestly I would have considered this as a pretty decent option. That or the Punkt MC02.
Clearly I have become a TV person over a movie person in terms of consuming a visual narrative. The standout shows for me this year have been (anything) Yellowstone related (there are always some weak points in those shows but the highs are very high) and The Bear.
I think this was confirmed to me when we finished watching Gladiator II. I can see what they’ve done here but I just didn’t care enough for the characters, even though the groundwork for these characters was established 10-15 years ago (whenever the first movie came out).
Which then got me thinking that the most important part of any creative narrative, is the story. Without the right story, it doesn’t matter if the visuals are great. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got Denzel Washington speaking the words. It never reaches the levels it could reach. Sometimes stories need room to breathe.
Maybe I’m just wired to accept episodic material, on the basis of my steady diet of serialised comic stories when I was younger?
The Bear season 4 drops today. 10 episodes of the bear. Average of 30min each, so we’re looking at 5 hours of screen time minimum over the next few days. I can’t wait.
Took me a minute, but finally updated the style of my weekly newsletter. Very basic, but honestly that’s about the right level of complexity with email…which sucks at rendering anything fancy unless you are a backwards ninja.

Been using my Kobo to read a book for the first time. Can’t help but compare it to the Kindle and I find the software snappier and pretty much at full parity to the Amazon product…except it’s better because I get to connect my library card and download away. Magic.
⚽️ The Club World Cup is a total cash grab but I guess the way to do this is give it away for free (on the DAZN app) and then get aligned with podcasts like The Rest is Football. Not convinced about all the teams in there, but eventually it will become something teams really try to get into.
With our holiday completely upended we have tried to find alternatives. The realities of what is available in Canada comes and bites us in the ass. Even the place we went to last year and really ended up enjoying isn’t an option anymore (the pools are no longer working for the entire summer).
Soo we’ve decided to embark on a home improvement project throughout the week while we reduce our body tempo. Hopefully with a little bit more time we can find a nice 2 week get away for the summer and then finally make it to Lebanon in time for Christmas.
🍳 Bolognaise.
Another auto-pilot dish. No sun dried tomatoes was a bummer. I’ve also never done one with bacon. But it all came together perfectly.
I need a drink.
Those Americans congratulating themselves for this action by the US must understand that war in the Middle East has a long fucking tail.
First comes strength, then comes peace.
— Some idiot in the current American Government….oops sorry Bibi Netanyahu.
Getting policy direction from Bibi Netanyahu is one of the weakest positions that a country like the US could have. Shame on you for sticking your sail to the mast of a genocidal, deplorable, murderous and odious government like the Israeli one.
Fleuss Automatic Popeye Bronemies Limited Edition SP-5161. I have been enjoying the character design collaborations that Spinnaker have been coming out with. The colour combination on this one is just a lot of fun. My only issue is that I don’t know if I would wear one. Great design to admire.
No idea how long this is going to last but having a kid obsessed with something has its perks - like this conversation :).
Transcript
Feeling soo deflated at the moment even though there is much to be thankful for, I’m just disappointed not to be seeing my mother and father after 6 years (see from three years ago when we tried this the last time). The universe transpired against us then just like it has now. Just frustrating, but alas others around the world have much, much existential issues to deal with that this is certainly one of pure privilege, which I understand.
It’s not even close but it does bring back memories from 3 years ago when circumstances beyond our control forced us to cancel our plans and holidays. I know that as a family we have precious few years to create memories together and the last 5 years have been a big hot mess. Seriously disappointing and just mentally annoying. Our bags were partially packed.
While we’re at it, Kevin ‘Kal’ Kallaugher’s new newsletter Kal Draws the Line is an instant subscription.
Glued to this post on Al Jazeera for coverage.
Bassem Youssef’s interview on Piers Morgan is a thing of beauty. So many wonderful quotes:
You don’t argue with pathological liar, you diagnose them.
Your optic nerve is antisemitic.
Israel has broken more international laws, than Diddy has violated young rappers.
The AiTelly youtube channel is a very different but massively informative channel on what’s going on in the Israeli/US/Iran war. Expect very little true information to come out, but 200 missiles used by the Iranians, from an approximate stockpile of 3,000. It will slow down but they will keep firing as it’s existential now.
Well that was quick. Flight was cancelled this morning, because of course it was. I haven’t seen my parents in 6 years and these assholes are a small part of the reason.
Then I get the pleasure of reading Western governments standing by this entitled nation of thieves.
They steal land.
The steal lives.
They steal people.
They steal time.
They steal peace.
So proud of their theft they even have a saying:
If I don’t take it from you, someone else will.
Globally we are moving back towards the law of the jungle. Everything, absolutely everything I was scared about from 🍊 1.0 is coming to pass in version 2.0.
Bravo America for inflicting this muppet on the world. A failed entertainer with no concept of diplomacy.
Honestly I’m not overtly surprised by Israel’s audacity. They have been aided and empowered by the world’s biggest army and economy. We are in a time where dialogue and even pretending to try and maintain norms no longer exists. The backlash to ‘wokeness’? Regardless, this is an unhinged state, unleashed as it ‘tries to protect itself’ by preempting and blowing shit up in other countries. Lebanon, Syria and Iraq will all get dragged into this in some form or another.
Israel as a state does not have the right to exist, just like any country in the world doesn’t have a right. People have a right to exist above any bullshit ideology or man made construct defined by lines on a map.
I really wish I knew what power the Israelis have over the western governments. The more you get online the more you see people being detained for speaking their minds and trying to draw attention to something that should be a non discussion for anyone with a shred of humanity or decency.
The Israelis are abjectly horrible human beings who think their lives are more important and worth more than a Palestinian life. Starving 2 million people and systematically killing thousands in the year 2025 should not be a fucking topic of debate. This government would run out of everything without the support and help from outside its borders.
I can’t understand how and why this is still continuing apart from blind racism. And to think governments and their long arms have the right to question someone who speaks out about this. I just really don’t understand the world we live in and haven’t for quite some time.
Toronto Subway vs. LA Metro 2000-2025 Comparison. Everyone at Metrolinx, the TTC, the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario should hold their heads in shame. To be outdone by LA…a city that twenty years ago didn’t even know that trains even existed.
I couldn’t help myself. I downloaded the iPadOS Beta and it really is a proper upgrade in every respect. Sure there are some rough edges, but honestly it’s just great to see my 6 year old machine been given a real boost. Great job to the teams working on this.
How the hell did we get here?
A madman like Putin is destroying a nation, for bullshit reasons. A country like Israel is allowed to commit ethnic cleansing in view of everyone. Racist and fascist views are rampant at a government level in many countries in Europe and now increasingly in the US. There is increasingly less tolerance between humans. Our home is on fire.
Actually the question shouldn’t be how did we get here, but rather how to we get out…
I’m actually really impressed with some of the new features coming to the iPad. In most cases it’s about bloody time really (Menu bar, Files in dock and Previews). Multitasking is finally implemented in a way that I will actually use.
The Freedom Flotilla is getting ever closer to Palestinian soil. Of course the Israelis are trying to do the normal intimidation of those onboard. The world is watching you assholes.
Tee-CAF (TCAF) 2025 was on this weekend. It was at a new venue this year, was at TMU on Carlton Avenue, just a short walk from the old hood. My buddy Carl Brundtland was on a panel, so we took the boys over to see what’s what and let them get a little bit of high brow comic culture. Mixed in within a bunch of exhibitors we saw some real characters. The guy with the long leather jacket, beak mask and earphones stood out. The guy with the beard and tight red dress made an impression.
The classic display tables, such as D&Q and the Beguiling had the most polished stuff. My boy got all three Milo books from Peter Balsano. There were a couple of books that did stand out to me, but I just didn’t take a punt and buy anything. I think I just probably needed a lot more time to digest what was going on, which was a lot. This is the third time that I go to TCAF and I am starting to get a little bit more familiar with the setup, except the interaction with the people creating the books themselves.
Maybe next time I’ll actually talk to the creators and get a feel for what they have created.
🍳 Sri Lankan Chicken Coconut Curry.
Even managed to make fresh naan breads with this as well. Total autopilot in making this. Made 8 smaller naan breads, next time will make them bigger. Hydration was close to perfect. 2 cups flour, 150ml of water was all it needed.
Took the kids to see their new school today. It’s fascinating how different schools in the same school board can have that distinct flavour depending on the community it is serving, the teachers that are there and the building and facilities themselves. The kids will be back to packed rooms of over 20 kids, but I’m heartened by the support for kids with ADHD, recognising that we are built differently and need different things to thrive. Also Zane will hopefully get back into chess again, since there is a chess club.
🍿 I am soo here for the total collapse of Elon Musk and Trump’s bromance. Just get the popcorn out and enjoy the show. America’s greatest douchebag couple.
The Feather app for iPad looks amazing! I didn’t know such a think even existed. With Procreate and Procreate Dreams, these are seriously amazing tools for creatives of any description.
It’s not every day that a site you created and ran 15 years ago is fully online, including the bloody url and favicon and you have literally nothing to do with it any more. I can only think that someone is doing this in the hope that I contact them to ask for it and pay their ransom?
Flawless. I just imported 1800 posts that I had as markdown files. I’ve been sitting on these for a while now but was inspired by Jamie’s post. Incredibly my own site now goes all the way back to 2004 as well. 21 years on the internet. It is disappointing that Micro.blog didn’t exist during my lean years that would have kick started my writing online more. It’s about recording moments in your life that you can celebrate yourself and reflect on where you’ve been. Lots of cleaning up to do.
I now know however that a personal site is not a destination, it’s a journey.
🍳 Chicken Parm with garlic mash and broccoli.
Loved how this came together. Simple dish but looked elegant on the dish and the mash was full of garlicky flavour. Would have loved a little more heat in the tomato sauce, but alas kids and Yasmine are just not ready for that.
📚 Finished reading: Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman. A good book to reframe your view on humanity and what each of us can or should do with their lives.
Just finished binging on 1883. What. A. Fantastic. Show. 10 hour movie is right. Some of the gunfights with the bandits felt a little much but overall the writing, cinematography, authenticity, acting and overall story was just on point. Highly recommended if you’re even remotely inclined towards period dramas.
Certainly clamouring for more of these characters but totally understand why this wasn’t ultimately extended to a second season, it works like magic that there are only these 10 episodes that tell a complete story.
You know you have a good product on your hands when you displace said item you go out and buy a replacement immediately. That’s the case with my Prostorm umbrella. Not a big fan of umbrellas in general but this thing balances build quality with price.
My eyes always rolls back hard in my head every time I hear about ‘Israel has a right to defend itself.’ No nation has a right to do the amoral and reprehensible actions this government has chosen to do. Displacing 2M people while killing 1000s is simply unacceptable and anyone choosing to defend such depravity is themselves complicit with this type of action.
🍳 Chicken Souvlaki.
This was Ryan’s choice. He really wanted this. Forgot to put garlic in the marinade. Everything came together well. Maybe a little heavy on the yeast. Maybe needed a little more salt (but I’m always second guessing this because of Yasmine and her aversion to salt).
Powerful video from the New York Times. Is it sensationalism? For all the canaries, it is not. It’s real and it’s been happening for a while.
🍳 Lamb ‘Kokkinisto’.
Excellent tenderness. This thing was cooking in the oven for 3½ hours. Perfect on a spring day like today.
Victoria Day is a day to reset after a long and harsh winter. Great book (Moral Ambition), great beer (from Wellington Brewery). Lamb in the oven.

🍳 Orzo Pasta Salada & Muhammara.
I added chickpeas in this one, and a slight tweak on the usual dressing (mustard, honey, olive oil, lemon and oregano). I think I could have either done a little less pasta or a little more dressing, but overall nice.
Reading Rutger Bregman’s Moral Ambition. Same guy who wrote one of my favourite books ever, Humankind is back. I really love his indignation and how he presents his arguments.
🍳 Tuscan Chicken. This was super easy. Sauce was great. Roasted potatoes turned out great as well. I do think I have to find a way to keep the breast juicy - note to check video on brining.
Ben & Jerry’s Co Founder Arrested For Capitol Protests. Ben gets it. It’s truly heartening that those with a voice are fighting for what is human and right.
Shame on all of us for allowing an abhorrent government like the Israeli government to get away with the inhumanity they are inflicting on children and a people.
Even bigger shame (and a colossal fuck you) on those funding, supporting and enabling these monsters.
🍳 Greek feast. Biftekia. Mustard potatoes. Tzatziki. Greek salad. Freshly braked pita bread. It all came together perfectly.
I really don’t know why it’s felt this way, but spring seems to have taken a really long time to get going. I am reviewing photos from last year and it seems as though last year was maybe a couple of weeks ahead of the curve. No big deal really now that things have begun moving by Mother Nature.
Trying to watch the last season of The Handmaid’s Tale and it’s all just a little too intense and weirdly close to home. Just a little too uncomfortable. Maybe I’ll be able to finish it some other time.
📚 Finished reading: No. 5, Vol. 1 by Taiyo Matsumoto. 3/4 of the way through this but just didn’t really click for me. Maybe if I was younger this might appeal more.
It was at least 15 years too late. I tried to finish reading No.5, but it just didn’t click. Some stories and character are meant for a younger me. Love the art, so going to see if Ping Pong is more to my current liking.
Trafford Watch Co is a company that I have been following with great interest. Their latest Daytripper I-70. My only comment is that $800 it is really up against some stiff competition. I would be much happier to drop $500 or $600 on this, considering it is a Miyota movement and a leather strap.
Scott Galloway vs Rory Sutherland. Two of my favourite internet personalities, in conversation.
🍳 Creamy Mushroom Risotto. This turned out great. A little too much black pepper maybe, but the lemon hit at the end was a wonderful touch. Great meal after yesterday’s lamb meat fest.
Week 1 - Finished art work from Zane and I. Hopefully we can get some momentum and do the same next week.


And week one is done. Have to give Zane credit for kicking my ass into picking up a pencil again and facing a blank page. One drawing per week. No more. No less.

Art session with Zane. I think we are going to make this a regular fixture in our house moving forward. Great fun.

An nod to the classic Field Notes edition, Grass Stain Green, my spring colour edition.
I never get excited about spring until I start to see the first shoots of green. I’ve seen a couple this week, so give it another 1-2 weeks and spring is officially here (even in the 6 season sense). My step count has absolutely taken a nosedive this year, but it was bloody cold this winter, so really looking forward to being a lot more active in the weeks and months ahead.
Spring book reading. And I’ve got more upstairs. Doubt I’ll be able to get through half of this stuff, but it is wonderful having all this option available to me.

Fixed the bikes for the season. Unlocking is very nearly over. I have yet to see a single green shoot from any tree yet but the weather is getting warmer and I can get out of the house without a jacket or beanie. Been a pretty long one this year.
During our move, I misplaced some of hardware for our outdoor Ikea furniture. Ikea has a replacement parts area on the website. Ordered the missing pieces, which are being replaced for free. Wonderful service.
The Atlantic must have seen how popular David Frum has been recently to The Hub subscribers, so they’ve given the man his very own show, The David Frum Show.
In between all the stupidity and madness coming out of The White House, it’s good to remember that there are some seriously smart people in the US. It’s just that their political system is seriously fucked and can be manipulated by a reality TV parody mafia boss that looks like a 🍊.
Carney’s Checkmate. How Canada’s quiet bond play forced the tariffs to be dropped. Now that is what I call a power play. The 🍊and his cronies are so dumb.
This is not a uniquely American problem. Liz Truss lasted less than a lettuce in the UK and did much damage to the economy because of sheer ignorance.
In world politics change requires diplomacy and discussion, not negotiating life a parody mafia boss you baboon.
Reminds me of one of my favourite quotes:
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
📍 Big Al’s. One of those pilgrimages for Zane and his fish.
Lovely new design for Blogroll.org. Type selection is on point and the colours are just right for this time of year.
🍊 He’s shorted the market. He’s fucking around with the world. Unbelievable really. Monkey with a machine gun.
This interview with Janice Gross Stein, Belzberg professor of Conflict Management and the Founding Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, was really wonderful and insightful against why Canadians are really scared of the consequences of this tariff war.
New album by The Weeknd (ok it’s 2 months old, but for me that’s as quickly as I move sometimes). On in the background while I work on my latest article. It’s been too long old friend (iA Writer).
It’s been a brutally long winter. Since moving to the new house, I’ve not really managed to do very much walking, even though our current location has a lot of walking opportunities.
I’ve also not been able to play outside with the kids (in any meaningful capacity) because it’s either too cold, too wet, to windy, too annoying.
But this week it looks like there will be a dip and then after that we are in an upward temperature trajectory. Can’t wait honestly.
Tron: Ares official trailer . Great trailer. Sets tone. Shows something different we’ve not seen before. And the second most important point, who’s doing the music? Nine Inch Nails. October can’t come soon enough. 15 years after the last Tron movie.
📍. Toronto Public Library. New library branch. Wonderful place. Can drive or walk or bike when the weather is nice.

🍊 Around 1,200 demonstrations planned on Saturday in all 50 states. Damn. Most popular president ever! Winning.
📚 Finished reading: Witch Hat Atelier, Volume 2 by Kamome Shirahama. It’s been a while since I’ve read something pretty mindless but fun, in a Naruto sort of way. It’s not serious, but it embodies what Manga does really well, keeping the story and characters moving.
🍊 The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan. The fringe weirdos controlling the US is just astounding. It is so surreal being in North America when all of this chaos is unfolding.
Hungary withdraws from International Criminal Court during Netanyahu visit. A bigger cockroach than Orban you will unlikely find. Oh wait Bibi.
🌨️ Honestly Canada, I expected a different April shower. Full blown snow storm in bloody April. Enough of this stupid winter already
I couldn’t help myself. Had to get one. Always been a Williams fan, but they’ve not been a great team for over 20 years.

📚 Finished reading: Scalped Deluxe Book Five by Jason Aaron. Finally finished reading this series. Completed 13 years ago. i began reading it when it first came out and Vertigo Comics was still a thriving imprint. Still trying to digest how I feel about that ending. In some ways its just right.
📚 Finished reading: Witch Hat Atelier, Volume 1 by Kamome Shirahama. This was light and fun. Certainly not in the general demographic for this type of book, but it has vibes of Kiki’s Delivery Service, by way of Harry Potter.
What has truly made me stop and take a little bit more note, is what previously would have been considered anathema, a presidential third term in the U.S, is now being spoken as easily as running for a first or second term. This article from Politico, from two months ago, explains how Trump (and Bannon) would go about this.
For myself, this is just astounding and if I was a US Citizen I would be absolutely livid. Not because of this particular amendment being broken. In other countries, having a political leader to run for longer than 8 years is very common, but the Americans have always held their sacred Amendments as untouchable. I would be livid because the frankly unethical Amendment to allow idiots to bear the right to hold semi-automatic weapons as a constitutional right.
The only good thing about breaking this 22nd Amendment would be that the other Amendment would be fair game. But in that world, democracy would have truly been ripped and America would have been plunged into a new Civil War. I’ve not been this interested in what is going on in the news cycle since Covid hit 5 years ago. Make it stop. Please.
📚 Finished reading: Friday Book Three by Ed Brubaker.
🍳 Apple and Butternut Squash Risotto.
Only had beef stock and I think vegetable (or chicken stock) stock would have been better. Also the squash in the mix melted away but didn’t add any colour. Next time roast the squash, blitz it before adding it. The roasted pieces on the top were great. Maybe a little bit more seasoning next time.
🍊 Mark Carney and Mike Myers. Actually want a ‘Never 51’ jersey. Also love the ‘Winter and Construction’. So true.
🍳 Lamb and potatoes in the oven - with tzatziki and Greek salad.
Complete auto pilot on this one. Would have been good with a bit of my fresh pita bread but was busy this morning. Didn’t have a green pepper or feta for the Greek salad, but that’s ok.
🍊 Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on Trump, tariffs and democracy. The space for thoughtful conversations on what is going on in the world continues apace. Using the tangerine emoji for my politics posts - similar to my ⚽ posts, not everyone will be interested and good for collecting at some point.
🍳 Chickpea Curry.
Another autopilot curry. Had to adapt a little for the kids (no spinach which was annoying). I would have loved to add more cayenne, but 1/8th of a teaspoon was more than enough for the rest of the family. Basmati rice. Lemon wedges with some yogurt and coriander. The only ingredient that was missing was a red pepper. Also brown sugar is a must.
Kinda liking what I’m seeing with the new Pebble watches. Sure still pretty geeky looking but I like the charge it once a month situation.
The train museum led me to Raymond Biesinger (a Canadian artist based in Montreal), which then led me to the 305 Lost Buildings of Canada book, but also all of the prints across North America. It’s really fascinating to me how little regard for historical buildings is given in different parts of the world (Europe being the extreme opposite).
Don’t buy a Tesla. Every time you look at the passion and gritting of his teeth as he does it - he clearly means it. Someone give this guy a copy of Ryan Holidays Ego is the Enemy.
Today is a train themed day. Ryan has always been enamoured with trains (since our time in Copenhagen). He loves watching them go by and is fascinated by them. So taking him to Union Station (on the subway) to check out some trains going in and out of the station. Then we’ll walk over to the Toronto Railway Museum and probably spend a good while in the gift shop (we need some more art on our walls in the new house).
America’s position in the global hierarchy isn’t guaranteed. It can be lost with stunning rapidity when an economically illiterate con artist and a cadre of ideologues are drunk at the wheel.
From The Index article on the new world order.
🍳 Aloo Gobi. This is one of the things that I can typically put together quickly and easily. Full of flavour and a solid vegetarian dish.
Ughhh. Scratched the car getting into my tight ass garage. It was really only a matter of time. It’s a few centimeters on the bumper and honestly just annoying. I guess scratches happen.
🍳 Zaatar Chicken. Muhammara (from scratch including roasting peppers). Turkish Salad. Pomegranate molasses (made it myself this time). This all came together really well. I’m into Turkish food this month, so trying a bunch of Mediterranean food now.
That got dark very quickly. Frum gives a little bit of flavour as to why Trump is going after Canada. It’s nothing to do with the economy, it’s about demographics and racial rebalancing. Totally agree with the thought, too ugly to make a joke about it, to stupid to talk seriously about it.
📚 Finished reading: Tokyo These Days, Vol. 3 by Taiyo Matsumoto. Really loved this series. Wonderful 3 volume edition but the very final punch was how we can all reflect on what the main character is going through as an extension of your own life. Slice of life in Japan. Just excellent.
🍳 Steak dinner. Mushroom sauce is on autopilot mode. Super easy but full of flavour. Got some soft meat (tenderloin) for the kids, but because of thickness was this perfect pink but obviously too pink for Yasmine and the kids. The adults had rib eye steaks. Oven fries were a little cwispy. No greens which I would have wanted.
The Moosehead Presidential pack. 1461 cans. Just enough to get you through Trump’s presidency. This thing is real and sold out for the moment.
🇨🇦 Elbows Up people!
In Conversation with David Frum. Trump’s tariffs against Canada and America’s place in the world. Not familiar with Frum’s writing but some seriously amazing insight in what is actually happening right now.
Yes for unlocking. First bit of decent weather, sun was out and likely can hide my big parka for the season until next year. Patagonia make some incredible stuff (bought 6 years ago and looks nearly new).
Started a new A6 sketchbook. Hoping to just kick start a habit I can lean into in different situations.

Music introduction for the kids, that was a very welcome ear worm for them, Pearl Jam’s Black. Can’t stress how proud I am of the boys humming this in the background all day.
What It’s Like To Be Fired by DOGE: Ex-Gov Employee Speaks Out. Some very dark clouds across the US at the moment. I certainly hope it doesn’t get worse…but in Musk, Bannon and Trump you have the opportunity for some serious evil shit to go down. Democracy has never been more fragile.
Micro.social is one of the best new apps to hit the Micro.blog circuit. Polished and being updated regularly. I really want to contribute an icon to the app, which is on my list.
Canadians not taking this 51st State bullshit. I hope you’re proud America.
The theatrics in the American congress its just incredible. It’s like a personal wank-fest of the 🍊. Some ridiculous rhetoric. What’s super interesting to me is whether this shit ends up with a third term. If that happens, and there isn’t a civil war in America, then you’re the next dictatorship. Watching this bollocks is just incredible. Mango-Mussolini.
🍳 Cream of Broccoli Soup
Another first. I looked at a recipe online for like a few minutes and then just put it together based on instinct. Turned out friggin great. We also had some fresh naan bread from yesterday which got sliced as strips.
I have been quietly curating a small table of Ontario craft beers I’ve been sampling over the last few months. My only gripe is I wish there was an integrated way in Micro.blog that would allow me to create new tables and let me add new entries to them. I can see myself using this for coffee beans, stationary, films, wine, spirits, chocolate, apps, anything really that I want to sample.
@manton where should I put a feature request? Haven’t done one of those in a really long time…
🍳 Sticky Date Pudding
This was a first attempt. Didn’t use brown sugar (which made the cake lighter in colour). Over cooked it and that made it more cake-like instead of sticky. Flavours were great.
🍳 Butter Chicken and Fresh Naan
Textures were perfect. The only thing I messed up was the seasoning at the end. Should have checked (it’s a classic mistake) but next time will get ahead of that. Also maybe don’t get coriander and stick to parsley for the garnish.
🇺🇦🇵🇸 As an honorary Canadian, I am proud to be firmly against the United States in supporting both Ukraine and Palestine. In both cases the aggressor is clear. The 🍊 is a complete fool who is fundamentally unqualified for the role that he is in. Words and actions have weight and this guy clearly hasn’t got a fucking clue.
Had a few Canadian firsts today. I slipped for the first time today. Not a terrible fall but that melted snow turning to ice is lethal. The second first was turning the corner and being met with a full production crew. Clearly a car scene with license plates from Illinois. Gettaoutmywayalready!
Pomera DM250US. Don’t know if I’ll back this, but it does look like a pretty nice focused tool. The sort of thing that the guys at iA would appreciate. Having single purpose tools sometimes feels like the right call. $400 is not cheap for a punt however.
Last year (today), I had just discovered that they were making a Fantastic Four movie. Now I finally got to see the first trailer. So much to love about this incarnation. The biggest compliment I can give is that this gives me strong Invisibles vibes but with something seemingly more elegant (if that is even possible). The CGI for The Thing is on point. Also the music crescendo is so good.
Andor, Season 2 Trailer. Something to look forward to in April for sure.
🍳 Mushroon Pasta
Yasmine didn’t like that is was very garlic-y. Next time, reduce the amount of garlic. I thought I’d put in too much dijon mustard for Ryan, but turns out that was fine. Also it could have done with 2 boxes of mushrooms instead. Overall though, very good little vegetarian dish.
🍳 Moroccan Chicken
I’m going to log a few other the things I’ve cooked to see what I cooked (to either remind myself when I did it or how often things have happened). This one can be a regular. Used thighs (without skin) and dates instead of apricots. There are a couple of ingredients that I could use (preserved lemons, apricots and almond slivers) that will elevate it.

I don’t always do this but I think I’ve decided on my 2025 watch. First dive watch and only my second Swiss watch. Usually a summer purchase.
That. Was. Satisfying. Just finished watching Cobra Kai and it tied a bunch of threads and ended it on a great note. Sure there was plenty of hokie moments, but it all came together in the end. Favourite part was definitely the ‘No. Mercy.’ line. Excellent and clever writing.
Honestly, could give two shits about ice hockey…but Team Canada thumping Team USA is delicious, just to rub it in that fat 🍊's face.
I’m absolutely going to feel that tomorrow. Spent an hour after work shovelling part of that alleyway with a few of the neighbours trying to get it ready to accept cars coming in and out. Hard work out but also a good community activity. If I had a beer fridge I would have definitely shared while we shovelled some snow. Maybe next time.
Almost Perfect. Always a fan of well put together books. I used to call ‘Creative Breaks’ as ‘Sessions’.
📚 Finished reading: Tokyo These Days, Vol. 2 by Taiyo Matsumoto
Taking the kids to the YMCA in a new area has also meant that I get to discover different neighbourhoods and different stores. The Black Canary espresso bar and my new favourite used bookstore The Great Escape Book Store.
❄️ First major snow shovelling. Backbreaking work for a city slicker like myself. 20cm of snow easily around us.
Kids first snow day ever. It’s February. Two more weeks to the end of Winter and move into Unlocking.
Loved this post by Andy, Why Blog if Nobody Reads it?. Over the years I’ve had my own thoughts about this, best described here and here.
The 🍊 is showing what a real asshole he is eh? If you shake his hand, check for the number of fingers left…
Somehow I had completely missed the existence of Berger Books, the real successor to Vertigo Comics, easily one of the most diversely awesome imprint in comics history.
The Growler – Ontario’s craft beer guide stopped publication last year. Clearly not enough interest in the publication, which I find strange. It’s a well put together guide, with a very dense layout capturing an enormous amount of information. Still I have an issue and it will likely be enough for a few years at least. Would love it if they released the maps so that they can be updated by others.
I’ve currently been binge watching Yellowstone. Great show so far even though nothing could be farther away from my life as the mountains of Montana and all the horses.
Always a treat to get new Steven Wilson work. Wish I’d known about December Skies during December because that would have been the perfect track for that month.
Seth’s take on the Canadian reaction to Trump’s embarrassing (and complete lack of understanding of how the world fucking works) is why I’m happy to be in Canada - even in the face of economic warfare from an absolute melon, erm sorry 🍊, they have class, something the 🍊lacks in every aspect.
The Twelve Snake is a limited edition from Christopher Ward, that celebrates the year of the snake in the geekiest way possible, and I’m all for it. Definitely pricey and it I had $1000 to burn I’d be there, but I don’t and so won’t, but love to see this sort of thing executed well.
Listening to the Canadian reaction to the 🍊’s stupid tariffs. I’ve always cheered for the underdog (it’s more fun that way) and make no mistake, Canada is definitely the underdog here. This reminds me a little of that idiot Liz Truss, totally inept and unqualified for the position she found herself in. The 🍊 showing his ineptitude.
Now that we’ve moved into the new house I’m going to lean into this video by Maurice about getting all my stuff organised and in the right place. Already got some of the Ikea containers, going to get some Kuggis with the bamboo lids.
ktool (love the name btw) sends newsletters and articles to your Kindle. I like the idea, but I’ve tried this sort of thing in the past (and for free?) and it never stuck.
I have been using an Analogue like system for the last month and I absolutely love it. However Arun’s take of making the cards even smaller is super intriguing and something I might try my hand at myself.
After 626 episodes the Core Intuition podcast is done. Love the commitment and longevity and a reminder that most things have a beginning and an end. Thank you gents, it was fun.
That was a first. Driving in a blizzard. Not fun at all. Had to be done to get some final things out of the other house, only three days left.
One week in the new house and damn if I’m not tired of playing house. Turns out the windows in the new place are terrible and leaky as all fuck. So had to add some film across them and getting some weather sealing tape around the frames. This is Canada, how can your windows be so shit. It’s -20°C outside those windows. Once we get a working washing machine and the shower stops whistling at us when we use it maybe things can settle down a little.
I think I will starting making an ongoing list of good craft beers. Why not. lets start with the one I am drinking.
The slow hard journey to getting settled in continues. It’s funny but while the Americas is meant to be the ‘New World’, it really isn’t. The future looks old.
📚 Finished reading: Tokyo These Days, Vol. 1 by Taiyo Matsumoto
🥶 Polar vortex. -20°C outside and the wind is howling. 3 days in the house with the kids. Definitely not worth going outside for any reason.
🇸🇪 IKEA has always been a mega stressful endeavour. Add a family to it all and honestly I shake my head wondering why I bothered. The only big news for me was a product got ‘upgraded’ from a hard plastic (which I dislike) to a soft plastic (which I love). We settled on a bunch of things that make like more functional but with the kids in tow…just a nightmare. Zane had multiple episodes inside. Ryan had a mega meltdown outside.
News of the ceasefire is sweet relief. Biden jacking off a wanted war criminal makes him no better. Netanyahu is human scum. He doesn’t know any better. Awful example of a human being. I had thought better of Biden. Now complete with a legacy that has so far killing 45,000 Palestinians.
So. Tired. Today is the first time I have actually felt my age. There were three young lads moving the house for us. Each no older than 21.
🚚 Moving day tomorrow. It’s so surreal for me at the moment. Unlike most of the houses I have lived in, this one has some serious connections with people in the neighbourhood. I would have hoped to have stayed another 2 years in this house. Alas it was not meant to be.
When we have the ball, it’s a game and when we don’t, it’s a fight.
— Manuel Ugarte
Love this quote and why this player is quickly becoming a cult hero.
NATO Phonetic Alphabet Converter is simple but super useful when in the moment you want to get the spelling across.
📚Finished reading: Scalped Deluxe Book Four by Jason Aaron
📚 Finished reading: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Reading The Message by Ta-Nehesi Coates is a really difficult read. Not for how it’s written but the parallels it draws between black America and what is happening in Palestine at the hands by the Israelis. If a nation has done these things to people in its own borders, why are we surprised that it would support the same actions somewhere else.
Fuck Twitter. I noticed that Micro.blog allows you to cross post to Twitter, so I wanted to try it and see the flow. Somehow, in the brief seconds I was on there I found myself watching some Joe Rogan garbage with Mel Gibson talking about blue dyes curing cancer and just rattling off pharmaceutical names like they were characters in a show. What the fuck is happening on that piece of shit of a platform? Die platform. Die you abomination.
As I look at these five men, I wonder if the world was favoured with better humans, what they could have done to change the world for the better. They are all complicit in a wide range of evil. For me however the ongoing racist and imperialist action against the Palestinian and Lebanese people, in the name of Israeli brutality and inhumanity, makes anything good they might have achieved practically irrelevant.
🥶❄️ It has been absolutely freezing in Toronto this last week. The coldest since we arrived here 2½ years ago.
Honestly America, you guys bringing the deranged 🍊 back into my newsfeed is just a dick move. Now whenever this old idiot has a brain fart and says stupid shit like he’s taking over Canada, Panama Canal and Greenland, it’s everywhere.
I have no idea how this made it into my Amazon soundtrack, but it was a perfect addition. Last Dance With Mary Jane by Snoop Dogg ft. Tom Petty and Jelly Roll. Everything from the harmonica, to the beat in the background. So great.
After a decade of playing around with pizza making, I think I’ve finally dialed it in to my ideal combination. 250g dough and grate the cheese on top (sprinkles more evenly that way).
Finished reading: Scalped Deluxe Edition Book Three by Jason Aaron 📚
The BYD Seal. It was only a matter of time before the Chinese car industry started to produce something that ticks a lot of boxes. It might not have a future in North America or Europe (because of tariffs) but in other parts of the world?
Finished reading: Scalped Deluxe Edition Book Two by Jason Aaron 📚 . Tearing through these at the moment. If you like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, Narcos or anything similar, this is for you.
Finished reading: Scalped Book One by Jason Aaron 📚. Easily one of the best comic book series ever made. Crime noir at its very best, with incredible art. I started reading this when it was being published monthly, really looking forward to finishing this story.
Here are my stats for 2024. Mega year for publishing on my site. No idea what happened in March but clearly I went turbo.
By my own standards I read a lot of books in 2024. Easily my biggest standout year since University I would argue. It was an incredible journey and one I can’t wait to better in 2025 (all this is thanks to the Toronto Public Library system which is magnificent).
Micro.blog played a very helpful role in cataloguing this transition as well. The bookshelf feature while not necessarily a core feature is one that I love to use and engage with.
The Simple Path to Wealth was easily the most important book I read in 2024. It went straight to the top of my financial books that if you’ve not read you should absolutely do. It was an eye opener and something that I wish I had read 25 years ago. Having said that, some of the necessary financial plumbing to achieve some of the advice in the book wasn’t always easily accessible to those outside North America. Regardless, there is a way now and you should totally make the painful steps to get your finances in order. It took me over 5 months of wrangling and I am still working through a few things, but it is super important that you do this and this book is the easiest way to get you there.
Shubeik Lubeik was easily one of my favourite comics this year. It had some stiff competition, as I caught up with Saga which is immense and one of BKV’s best work (which is saying a lot as the man does not write anything that isn’t an 8/10). A Distant Neighbourhood was easily one of the best manga’s I have ever read. For someone like me in my 40s it totally hit the right notes, even though it was set in Japan.
The Art and Business of Online Writing was incredibly instrumental in how I am looking to continue with my more considered writing on the web. I still believe in what I am doing at Stet, but clearly I am not using the various online platforms to the fullest extent. I read Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. There were some good concepts in there. Seasonality of work and getting a matinee in the work month being two important ideas I will hopefully look to implement. Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman was the book I think I needed the most. 2024 was not a year of major production and creativity. Work played a major role in destroying my mental health for a while, the wars in Gaza and Lebanon destroyed my drive because these side hobbies felt frivolous. This book framed things in a way to help me get over all of that. I did a ton of reading instead. I let ideas percolate in my head. It reminded me that it’s ok to have a seemingly less productive ‘season’ if that season was 8 months or more.
One of the things that I didn’t catalogue are the plethora of cook books I checked out. Ottolenghi’s books Simple and Plenty More were great, Falastin being my favourite. I also bought Chef Jack’s Dig In and looking forward to trying a bunch of recipes in there. I also thought Joshua Weismann’s An Unapologetic Cookbook was excellent (his second book was less important to me).
Finished reading: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman 📚
9th of April was when it all happened. I walked into the public library to get a sheet of paper printed and left with a library card and 5 books under my arm. This then opened the door wide for me to borrow and read 39 books this year.
I remember a few years ago seeing some others online ‘claiming’ that they had read 40 books or more in a year and I honestly didn’t believe it was possible.
This year I found out how. When the price entry to a good book is free, then it can become a source of incredible joy (and knowledge) and 40 books is really not that large of a mountain to climb.
The beauty of course is that I am not limited to one way of ‘reading’. This year was the first time that I enjoyed a few audiobooks as well. As long as I am in North America, I have access to whatever I want (not always at exactly the time I want, but that’s ok).
Just rewatched Dune. Complete masterpiece. The sound. The costumes. The visual effects. All wrapped in excellent performances and a tight script. Escapism at its finest.
Josh Johnson on the frenzy around Luigi Mangione. Fun starts around the 14min mark. So very, very astute.
How to Draw Like an Architect. Another one of these look over the shoulder of someone doing their thing and being great at it.
🏈 Watching my very first NFL game. I don’t know the rules or what is going on. Why are some of the players wearing fanny packs? Who are the coaches speaking to through their microphones? Why do the Steelers have one of the worst bland corporate looking logo I have ever seen? What is with the little towels the players have on their side?
🎄 Oh the lies we tell our kids for the sake of preserving the myth behind a man in a red suit. Merry Christmas everyone!
Christmas Message from Irish President Michael D. Higgins. I remember years ago listening to Higgins address the world during covid and being super impressed with his thoughtfulness, warmth and poignancy. This message is no less powerful but for very different reasons. The Irish have endured and come out on top. Here’s to the Palestinians and Lebanese achieving even a fraction of this type of success in the future.
2024 was a lot of things to me and most people I imagine. One thing I believe is that 2024 was not kind. The genocide in Palestine at the hands of the racist imperialist Israeli ethnostate (enabled and supported in full by the morally bankrupt Western governments) remains a particularly harrowing episode in our collective history as humans. These demons in Israel have lost their humanity. Human beings are not meant to do these atrocities to other humans, and certainly not celebrate it while doing it. If you’re an Israeli, or an Israeli-sympathiser that condones the slaughter of babies, children, women and men then you have also lost your humanity and I hope that your way of thinking is something that can be eradicated in the near future. You are the worst of what humanity had to offer in 2024, or even in the last 50 years - and you had a lot of competition. I wish you nothing but misery in all aspects of your life.
American politics continues to fall further down the toilet. Stupidity and social engineering at a mass scale has finally yielded the results that its creators intended. Total unaccountability and chaos to do what is right. People who barely have a grasp of the issues are being given weapons they don’t know what to do with.
Lebanon’s regular 20 year pummelling continues without missing a beat. Every fucking 20 years. I can’t recall a more unfortunate series of events, spanning decades, happening to a tiny collection of dirt. There will always be resistance to evil. The Israelis (and their sympathisers) seem to have forgotten this very simple fact.
All these events have played their toll on me. I am less able to function apart from work. My enthusiasm for my projects feel completely and utterly meaningless in the wake of some serious shit that is happening around the world, to people I care about. This has happened to me before. Part of me is broken, but I want to do something about it.
For 2025, my theme is kindness. Kindness to myself. Kindness to those around me. Kindness to those further away. We could all do with a little bit more kindness.
It took a minute - well actually it took around 7 years - but I finally got the site where I want it across text, photos and my bookshelf. The last two pages have been annoying me for years but it was fine until this morning when it was bloody not fine anymore. I also tweaked the colours a little so that they are both neutral both in normal and dark modes.
Over the last 20 years of playing around with websites I have wondered to myself why I bother spending time tweaking and fixing and sweating the pixel details. I’m not alone in this space as clearly many, many others have the same tinkering itch. It’s an itch that you can’t help but scratching away at. Leave it alone and it will be fine. Not that I spent ages over the last 7 years playing with the design (I would tweak once or twice a year), but my feeling now is that unless there is a major shift in what I do with my site, the design will remain consistent and the same for many, many years to come.
Finished reading: Just Enough Design by Taku Satoh 📚. I don’t tend to read a lot of books about design. This one hit all the right notes. The concepts being Japanese design by way of hodo-hodo. Tiny little book with short essays that showcased the designers thoughts. Loved it because it celebrated some of the best of what I feel is Japanese culture.
🎄Finally work is over for at least the coming week. Have a couple of emails to close out a couple of minor things, but then just total disconnect. It has been an incredibly challenging year but needless to say, a lot of life has happened in 2024. Looking forward to chilling with the kids and doing things that make me happy.
Monument Valley is easily my favourite iOS game series (so much so I have a print above my desk). The third instalment of the series continues the fine tradition by adding a new way of moving around. The colours, design and music remain on point. If I had a ‘complaint’ it would be that there isn’t any merch I can get easily.
I’m still not up to speed with what has happened in Syria. It feels like a civil war that started some 12 years ago. The rebels lost a few years ago, only they didn’t, rather they came back and managed to take over in a matter of a week? What the hell is going on here? Why now? Not that I feel anything but contempt for Bashar, but the whole thing has unfolded or unravelled during very curious timing…
I missed posting one for 2024, but alas it was a bit of a strange year for the design of the website (went a little maximalist for a while there), back to clean lines that have defined this site for 7 years (?!) now.
❄️ First snowfalls in Toronto. One of my favourite scenes in Mad Men is of course the Carousel scene. Posting photos on my site allows me to briefly jump back and relive a year in seconds. It is one of the most powerful parts of any personal site (and probably the inherent power behind Instagram as well). So much life has happened. 2024 has been a wild ride.
🍁🍂 Do you know what is worse than garbage day? Garbage day when you have to collect all the leaves from around the house. On the bright side only have to deal with it once a year.
Got my winter tire on this weekend. Then somehow the battery in the car just stopped working. Have had to get a booster charger. Car problems have not been something I have had to deal with for years…
The ‘My Soundtrack’ feature on Amazon Music is easily one of my favourite finds related to music I’ve had in years. It’s like I’m listening to a radio station from my teens and twenties.
Success is about selling emotion, not products.
— Mark Tilbury
🍊 I got to say a big thank you ‘Merica for making everyone bend the knee to the tangerine. First up. Justin Trudeau. Feels more real this time that I am actually living in Canada.
How can humanity be so evil and those with the fucking power to do something don’t. I try and avoid things like this because it truly breaks my brain, even more so as a father of two. So fucking evil. The Israeli ethno-state has a lot to answer for. Hopefully soon their time will come to answer for these abhorrent crimes.
For the last 5 weeks we have been hitting the Toronto pavements in search for a house. It’s been a brutal experience. What has surprised me sometimes is the level of mess that we have encountered in some of the homes we have visited. I mean in some cases it’s been really eye opening to see how some people choose to surround themselves with stuff. So. Much. Stuff.
I am a distance from being a true minimalist (or someone who has enough), but so many out there could really do with some Marie Kondo advice.
As I am getting older I am finding that I have increasingly become more and more sensitive to sound. Whether it’s the stuff blaring from the streets or my own kids going crazy while playing it all just impacts me, my thoughts and my mood. I have found that wearing my earphones increasingly more even if not listening to anything (or even not turned on) has helped me manage this a little.
Every once in a while I am reminded that I live in North America and that there are doofuses in power that have the ability to do things that contradict basic progress. Take Doug Ford’s war on bike lanes. What is this guy’s problem?
Netanyahu ICC war crimes arrest warrant ‘outrageous’ says Biden. You are on the wrong side of history Biden. It’s a shame because you seemed like a man of some integrity. Rather you are the biggest supporter of an odious and repulsive ethno-state.
ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer pair of racist baby killers.
Stick to Football. Easily my favourite way to start a Thursday.
Actually liking Bluesky and the interactions/vibe of the place. Will still obviously be POSSE, but dipping in there and replying to things is a nice way to go (stuck a hell of a lot more than Threads).
Finished reading: Enough by John C. Bogle 📚
This video on the engineering of Venice is an incredible showcase of what the built world is capable of. Constraint being the mother of invention.
What Elon Musk Wants From Donald Trump. Loved the drop in the middle, which should be the title to a documentary about this era, American Oligarch.
Pro Logo Designer Rebrands The LA Clippers. This is totally my kind of video. Someone who knows their stuff, opening their door and letting you see and walking you through how they work.
I just got back from New York and still letting the whole experience unpack itself out of my brain. I’ve flown into Newark airport countless times but we would then head in the other direction towards Princeton. This time was different, we landed in Newark and headed east. As we approached the Manhattan Island, the landscape was a very familiar American highways construction. Looping freeways, lawyer billboards hugged the edges of the roads. The road twisted inbetween trees, that felt different to the ones we have in Canada, these were shorter in stature.
The first real signs of what was to come unveiled itself as we took the bend just before entering the Lincoln tunnel. I caught a glimpse of Bjarke Ingel’s VIA 57 West building (I had no idea what the thing was called but knew of the building). What I didn’t realise was that I was also looking at Hell’s Kitchen1. The view lasted a split second. I tried to grab my phone and take a pick, but the moment was over as we quickly turned into the Lincoln tunnel.
When we emerged on the other side, the transition to a startling density came almost instantly. Looking outside the car window it took my eyes a little while to fully grasp what we were driving through. A hyper dense city where every block is fully occupied by a building structure from edge to edge. In front of the buildings a slender pavement wraps around the structure. The biggest shock however was the limited space between the roads. The streets could barely fit one car down the centre, with another car width on either side for drop offs and pick ups - or as was exceedingly common, construction.
As we made our way through the chaos, the logistics of making this place function in a reasonable manner began to present themselves in real time. Life here would require an understanding of consequences and compromises. We were instantly given a demonstration. Traffic was bumper to bumper, blocked on all sides. And then an ambulance siren was heard behind us. There was literally nowhere to go. Intersection crossings had to be respected but there was no flexibility to allow emergency vehicles to pass.
What totally captured my imagination was the grid. Not only the audacity to create something like this, but also the ability to implement and maintain this grid. It created a space unlike anything I have ever seen. My mind has accepted that cities were messy, organic constructions. Roads wind around as we built things sometimes around the natural world that existed. Sometimes we would tame the land to suit our very specific needs. The common element was that there was no consistent order within them.
Here however was an island that seemed completely flat and where there was a complete embodiment of a grid that was then turned up to the max by building straight up. I have lived in dense areas in my life, but this order to density to scale was a unique combination.
Someone had to wrangle this defining city element into existence. I had to find out more. Thankfully The Museum of the City of New York has collected all this information to celebrate and educate on this very unique city design aspect.
A familiar name because of all the Daredevil comics I’ve read of the years. ↩︎
Ok I really hadn’t appreciated how tightly packed Manhattan actually is. It’s tiny and super densely packed…truly unlike any other place I have been to (and I’ve been to a lot of dense places).
The Holstee Manifesto. Definitely getting one of these onto the wall.
Honestly I’m finding it hard to concentrate on my own passions and hobbies because they feel so trivial in comparison to what is going on in Gaza and Lebanon. A building next door to my cousins supermarket got bombed this week. My cousin was in the building at the time. Aside from the destruction one of the girls at the cashiers died. The utter randomness of hurt and destruction continues unchecked.
The last time I bought Field Notes was 7 years ago. While I’ve been stocked up nicely, I have been hankering for a restock for a while. Should be good for another 2 years. See you in 2026.
Seeing this monologue by Mehdi Hasan reminds me of what a shit choice people with a conscience have in the upcoming election in the US.
On the one hand you have a Democratic nominee that sees absolutely nothing wrong with what is going on in Gaza and Lebanon - and will continue to enable and support the genocide perpetrated by the 21st Century Nazis (that’s some fucking irony there). The colonialism and racism at play here is just astonishing. On the other hand you have a Republican, who also doesn’t see anything wrong with what is going on, but will likely ratchet up and expand the killing.
Both are distinctly odorous. Given the choice, which I obviously don’t have, I don’t know how I would use my vote. My view is that we collectively cannot stop the killing but what is happening right now, is inhumane and must never be forgotten, by myself or anyone with a moral fibre in their bodies.
The sooner work can be begin to isolate Israel from the world, in the same way the world did to South Africa during the apartheid, the better.

I’m testing out a new ‘Zen’ mode for my mobile life. I’m trying to limit how long I spend on the phone and focus on things that matter a little more to me.
Reading has generally re-entered my life in a big way this year, which I am incredibly happy about. What I would like to do is create a little more space for writing and drawing again. I’ve taken nearly a year off.

Easily one of my favourite ways to start the day. Fresh cup of coffee, a great book (currently reading John Bogle’s Enough) and a quiet house. Everyone else is asleep.
The video explaining what has been going on in Gaza is truly harrowing. I mean what the fuck is going on in the world where this type of behaviour is not cut outright. Just not right.
It’s not easy to see time. Great post and exceptional graphic on Seth’s blog today.
Mo Hamz is one angry Palestinian, but I love the fact that he’s not going quietly into the night. As long as there are people with this type of energy, Israel will ultimately not prevail. They will however continue to kill Palestinians, until a more active generation stops them.
Finished reading: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel 📚
🚚 Landlords informed us that they want the house back. After two years we’re going to be moving again. Thankfully it’s only within a city, rather than to another country. Silver linings.
“Surrender or starve” plan for war. And the entire world watches as the 21st Century Nazis continue their genocidal mission to extract more land, soaked in the blood of Palestinians.
I’ve spent the entire morning working through my Forever Note stack, and it really is a revelation. A few simple rules of organisation and all of a sudden my dumping ground has become incredibly organised. And fricton of maintenance is really low. Highly recommend you take a good look.
Forever Notes. Super interesting idea. I have tried multiple methods for my notes and none have stuck recently.
Amazing Comics Company. Joe Quesada has always been my favourite artist of all time. The last time he did this was for Event Comics and the main character Ash, which was great. Looking forward to seeing what he comes up with.
Holey money. First time I use the AI feature for text description (using the Mimi Beta), and it really is like magic. Great work @samgrover !

While the situation in the Middle East is absolutely deplorable and shows a chasm of epic proportions between the ruling elite and what they think is acceptable based on race.
It’s not ok if you’re Ukrainian. It’s totally fine and necessary if you’re Palestinian or Lebanese.
I am however heartened by the voices of people I genuinely look up to and listen to or watch. Journalists, writers, activists, helpers, volunteers, parents, mothers and fathers who are not going quietly and accepting this situation.
The latest being Ta Nehisi Coates and Trevor Noah. These people have huge platforms and bring with them a great deal of attention. My hope is that some of that attention is converted into meaningful change.
From a moral standpoint, this genocide will not be completed for as long as there is one Palestinian or Lebanese, then there will always be resistance to cowardice, brutality and inhumanity.
With everything going on in Lebanon, it’s super hard for me to get excited about everyday things that I would typically get excited about. Life’s mini milestones. They all seem super trivial now as I continue (like millions around the world) to watch disaster unfold and not a single powerful country out there to step in and do what’s right.
The world feels like it is completely morally bankrupt and the ruling elite across nations that sit idle or support can seriously go fuck themselves.
Norman Finkelstein and where is this Israel-Lebanon war heading? A masterclass in understanding the endgame. Heartbreaking watching this horrible situation play out again and again, across the decades.
41,000
The number of Palestinian lives lost in the last year.
1139
The number of Israelis that lost their lives in the same amount of time.
The multiplier is 40 (as of October 2024). That is how much more expensive an Israeli life is compared to a Palestinian one. The racial supremacy at play here is simply astounding. This is not ok. This is not right. You cannot carry out or enable genocide and have any moral standing.
How anyone in power can be aware of these numbers and continue to support this deplorable government shows their moral corruptness and callousness.
Elected leaders who support this regime are devoid of any humanity. Don’t talk to me about Putin, anyone supporting Netanyahu is cut from the same blood drenched rag.
To Joe Biden,
Shame on you.
The world deserves a better world leader.
You’ve managed to make sure that Iran is the only power, in the entire world, that is willing to stand up to the morally deplorable and callous Israeli government. Even if it’s fruitless or for show at least someone is bothered to take action rather than ignore the genocide being committed.
Meanwhile you, the United State’s elected leader (which even with your stupid electoral college garbage still means the majority of Americans who bothered to vote), stand behind and support a regime that has only death on their minds. I cannot believe the majority of Americans believe that this genocide is just.
The Palestinians and Lebanese and Syrians and Yemenis and Iranians did not cause the holocaust, but critically they are paying for it in the same manner.
Back in the 1940s America stepped in to stop humanity’s madness. America has now switched roles and is the proxy enabler of the madness.
Politically you are retiring in 2 months, why wouldn’t you take a stand and do what’s right? You have nothing to loose. You’re nearly dead anyway. Before you have no power left, save some lives, even if they are filthy Arab and Persian ones.
— K
I feel that politics have normalised terrible behaviour, which has then emboldened people in power that may have acted with more restraint to simply go unleashed, the consequences be damned. Regardless, world is only going to get much worse.
As the daily news from Lebanon trickles in, one devastating blow at a time, it’s a reminder that social orders don’t matter unless you have the muscle to enforce those orders.
Somehow we find ourselves back at the mercy of the laws of the jungle. Might beats right. Iran and the US are playing their proxy war while innocent people and futures are the collateral damage.
The Lebanese are descendants of the Phoenicians and a Phoenix never dies.
Adrian Newey Exclusive: Why I Quit Red Bull & My Future at Aston Martin. What a coup for the High Performance team. Can’t wait to hear what the legend has to say.
The Godfather is such a great movie. I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen it but every time I rewatch it I’m just totally sucked into the world.
🏃♂️ That. Was. Tough. First HIIT session in years and every muscle aches. The first 15min after are not great but feel more energised now. Missed this and actually think that my new app of choice (Freeletics) might keep me going. Let’s see.
Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways, men can be immortal.
— Ernest Hemingway.
🍃🍂 Autumn is definitely in the air and I’m all for it. Crispness in the air. The light is a little different, a little lower, less harsh.
Finished reading: The Algebra of Wealth by Scott Galloway 📚. This one was an extension of Scott’s previous book I just finished. However it does go deeper into many economic concepts (so at least you can’t claim ignorance). ETFs similar to mutual index funds are a major part of the answer, but equally there is a lot there about buying property and hopefully using wealth at different times of your life to help you lead a better life. It’s a great book and one I wish I had when I was starting my working life.
More over having someone guide me around these economic constructs (that I honestly have previously had little to no interest in) is another important element in this. I sadly did not have that growing up and until recently didn’t have the inclination to find out more. This is a good book to get you on this journey.
Today morning was a bike day. Went from sunny to gloomy and back to sunny again. Kids have Karate, so that’s the afternoon sorted. Might get a little reading done.
Just finished rewatching Mad Men. It’s a great show, with both great and vile characters. I love the historical context. I love Peggy’s wardrobe. I love the dialogue. Most of all I wonder what things we are doing now will be seen as completely incomprehensible to someone 60 years from now?
Newey to Aston Martin is massive. The man clearly knows his way to a successful car. Could this be how Alonso finally gets his third championship?
There was a time that I would watch the Apple infomercial when it came out. Even be excited about it. I can’t remember a time I was less interested in what Apple has just released. From a computing standpoint I’m good. iPhone Pro has hopefully years of service in it. My 2018 iPad Pro is still a compelling device, 6 years after it was released. My Mac Mini is chugging along, kicking ass and taking names.
The only take I have is that the Apple Watch is slowly turning into a device that I don’t hate. It’s getting thinner and more rounded and less of a mental burden. It’s only taken them 10 editions to get there.
Easily my favourite time of the year. The weather is shifting. There is a crispness in the air. In a few weeks everything goes bang and the colours will explode. If you live in a country with seasons don’t take it for granted. This is not the norm for millions.
Finished reading: Paper Girls Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚. I love BKV. He’s brought me hours of joy and is one of the best writers of comics, but this series did not connect with me. I just wasn’t all that interested. Equally I returned the first Incredible Hulk volume by Jason Aaron (another writer I love). Tastes have clearly changed over time and that’s ok.
Finished reading: The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway 📚
Fjorden acquired by Leica. Totally missed this news, but pretty exciting news for the Fjorden team. Hopefully this means that maybe the grip will slowly get some material science help from the Leica team to improve the wearability of the grip itself (mine is already showing wear in the corners). Also would be nice to see the iconic red dot on the hardware as well - doubt this is on the cards but one can dream :).
First day back at work. I feel refreshed and ready to go. Game face is on, let’s see how long I can keep my holiday calm in place.
Procreate’s Stance on generative AI. Straight to the point and totally on point. Love this company and both their products.
Finished reading: Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed 📚. Great summer read. Can totally understand the praise this work has received. Fantastically original, great scope, well written and drawn. Celebrating Arab culture as it is now (rather than as it was). Highly recommended.
Yes, People Do Buy Books. I also buy books, but nowhere near as much as I read and listen - mainly because of the insanely great public library system. To get into my personal collection, that book has to work overdrive. Thankfully there are those books, but they are the exception.
Just finished reading the first chapter of Shubeik Lubeik, and it was exceptional. Been a long time since I read a black and white comic with such emotional power.
Making The Cut. This year I watched the Olympics with my Canadian hat on (typically I’ll root for the Lebanese, the Greeks, the Brits and now the Canadians). I missed the swimming competitions which would have been awesome to watch. The Canadian women’s beach volleyball team has been another highlight. Shame they missed the gold by a few points.
Part of the joy of relaxing on holiday is being given the autonomy to work at my own pace on stuff that matters to me on a personal level. At the moment I’m editing the BEC (Built Environment Compendium) Vol.2. Back into the warm embrace of the Pages app, which I’ve learnt to love, two pens (one to scribble and the other to highlight) and my thoughts. Happy Holidays!
I’ve been thinking a little about how I can take in more information from the non-fiction books I read. The first tip I’m going to try is The Blank Sheet Method. The second thing that I’ve discovered is the excellent scanning/OCR feature of the Notes.app. It’s not 100% perfect, but honestly I can deal with the occasional missed word or two. Just one note with the key parts of the book scanned and searchable for the future.
Anyone have any other low friction tips to share?
Big fan of Ottolenghi cook books. I’ve used a few of the recipes recently (one today in fact) and it’s exactly the kind of colour and flavour that I absolutely love. The thing is that these books actually benefit from being physical items rather than entries into an app like Mela (which I love). I tend not to buy many books anymore, because of the whole Toronto Public Library thing, but I might make an exception for these books.
Finished reading: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport 📚. Nothing majorly new in this book (for anyone that has been paying to Newport’s podcast, but its nice to find out about all these stories. I also went for the audiobook and I tend to enjoy Cal on his own.
Even after reading The Simple Path to Wealth, it is clear that across all the different countries and their regulations (and bullshit), governments want to keep you poor. If this was simple then everyone would be able to do it pretty quickly. Rather even after someone tries to decipher it all, there is still an immense amount of friction that intentionally makes things harder. It’s even harder for those of us who enjoy a more mobile serial emigrant lifestyle.
Having lived and worked in seven countries, finding a place that will allow me to invest and keep things mobile is actually an exceedingly small number. The only one that I have found is Interactive Brokers - that is available in all the countries I have ever lived and worked in. I don’t know when they expanded into all these countries (or if they always operated in these countries), but this a massive win and feather in their cap.
Can’t really comment on how good a service it is, but having the ability to move my investments wherever life takes me is a truly unique feature and worth other possible pain points.
The only other brokerage that came up in my limited search was Saxo (out of Denmark) and Charles Schwab, except BOTH are not available in Canada, so I would need to move everything over to Interactive Brokers if we ever decided to move.
Aghori Mhori Mei is the new Smashing Pumpkins album being released this Friday!
My sleep has been truly terrible these last few weeks (months?). On the off chance that my phone had something to do with that, I bought this Alarm Clock (although any will do) and somehow I have been getting a full night’s sleep. It has been a stark and instant change. Now every night my phone which is pretty useful in my bedroom (controls the light and adjusts the temperature of the room) is relegated to being placed outside. Best possible life adjustment.
Finished reading: The Simple Path to Wealth by Jl Collins 📚. What a book. It is extremely US centric, but there are some clear truths here that just need to be adapted and massaged to reflect what is possible to me. I wish I had this book 20 years ago, but then most of the things he talks about would be unattainable in the countries I lived in…but not anymore. Highly recommended for anyone looking to get their financial life in order. Been going crazy sorting it out this weekend.
I have long argued that our plastic (and other material) trash is part of our built environment. Not in the traditional sense, but it is something that we as humans have contributed to our world and have built one tiny small colourful piece of plastic at a time. Up-cycling this material has never looked this great - although I do find the price a little steep for what it is.
Yesterday was a fun summer adventure with the kids. Japanese stationary. Japanese cheesecake. Art Gallery. Park. Makers pizza and home again. They went swimming on Friday and Sunday brings football in the morning with the other dads.
I’m currently reading The Simple Path to Wealth, which is probably the best book I’ve read about money. I wish I had this at the start of my financial journey, which then makes me think that this is one of those canonical books I want to give to my kids. Which then makes me think what other canonical books would I give (and read with my kids if it encouraged them to do things better than I did)?
🇵🇸 Time will absolutely not look kindly on the US’s blinkered support of the atrocities in Gaza and more importantly Palestine in general.
Having a war criminal presented as a guest of the state is not a good look if you believe you are on the right side of plain human decency.
It may be half a world away, but this is happening with your support and backing in the face of what we can all agree is just humanly abhorrent. Sort it out. It’s just not right and while things have changed (within the US, as the Arab diaspora spreads), this has been ratcheted with even more brazen and unacceptable violations of human right we all can agree on for ourselves. I just don’t understand why this cannot be a consideration for other human beings?
Endearing accents. Call it sentimental from watching too much American TV while growing up, but today had a short meeting with someone presenting from Jersey and it was thick, which kinda made me smile. In the same way whenever a true Canadian says about, just gives me a little sense of place.
Can Paris fix its poop problem before the Olympics? Through engineering, that’s how. I kinda feel that it would have been better if they had built more than a single reservoir, but alas it would be a great way to make things better 100 years after they made it completely terrible. I imagine this must contribute to Paris Syndrome.
Cobra Kai has been a pretty fun show to watch. When it’s great, it hits some really big highs. It suffer from some poor writing choices, but overall the momentum of the show is great. I also kinda like the fact that they’ve split the last season into three five episode mini seasons. Extends the time artificially but I’ve got something to look forward to for another 8 months. I highly doubt they’ll make a spin off, hard to keep mining these characters.
The ANZA 750S by Monday Motorbikes is definitely my kind of urban bike. The fact you can also get two people on this is pretty awesome as well.
Finished reading: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine 📚. This was amazingly endearing. Quick read but also made me cringe and showed me a window of a life I once craved.
Finally, Presto is on Apple Wallet. One less card to carry. I was just thinking about getting one of those three card wallets. Not anymore.
Yeah climate change is not real. Flooding across Toronto is perfectly normal. Nothing to see here. Absolutely nothing to see.
🏀 Activity number one for the summer evenings is definitely some basketball. I remember loosing 25kg when I was 16 on the back of this daily habit. Let’s see if I can build that habit again.
I think I can likely get a little bit of my attention back now that both the Copa America and Euro’s is over. It’s been fun following along both the matches and then in a number of podcasts. Having said that I do want to concentrate on other activities, so will only really be following a little bit of Manchester United preseason, which is just to see what’s going on.
Finished reading: Shift by Hugh Howey 📚. I listened to this one as an audiobook (even though I have the ebook of this as well). This story is just incredibly dense and extremely well put together.
🥐 For the last few months we’ve been relying on Blackbird Bakery for our baked goods on a Sunday. Today Ryan asked for the alternative (when presented with the option) and ended up getting the Bisou bakery. French (or French Canadians) know how to make the better croissant.
When the stars align… ⭐ Lionel Messi’s photo shoot with a baby Lamine Yamal. A 20 year old Messi with a baby Yamal. I mean, c’mon.
ProNotes is an extension for Apple Notes. Most notably (for me at least) is it bringing markdown to the app (after a fashion).
Thank You! The montage of all the madness is worth the watch alone.
Really looking forward to playing around with Writebook. I guess could do a Digital Ocean thing, but I kinda would like to play around with this, you know as an indie publisher of books and other text and image based products.
I was about to get the Crossroads watch (by Trafford Watches, but the ‘loud’ Miyota movement kinda put me off. I am however really looking forward to the Touring GMT and the three hand version (that they’ve not announced but briefly showed in the latest newsletter). I like the design language and it’s seemingly a little more affordable to the closest alternative, Farer.
One of the most boring (and thankless tasks) is sorting out all the kids old toys. For the most part we’ve been pretty good at sticking to a lot of wood based toys, board games and Lego. However plastic always makes it into the pile. Still operation reduce is well underway
Saw the first episode of The Bear Season Three. How do you follow-up the season two finale? In an intense way, only this show can do.
Another great series by Ed Brubaker. Friday is as good as you expect it to be. Setting it in the 1970s in a fishing town provides the right kind of atmosphere. Marcos Martin brings an incredible clarity to the environment that they are depicting. Just an absolute joy of a series and super excited that the third book in the series is released this summer.
Finished reading: Friday, Volume 2 by Ed Brubaker 📚
Absolutely love the colours in Friday. There is a quiet elegance to the palette used that suits the story perfectly.
Throughline is a historical podcast that is blowing my mind. Impeccably well put together. Makes me want to create audio with any level of production.
Finished reading: Friday by Ed Brubaker 📚
Yeah this is not what we signed up for Toronto. The start of the long weekend (and the kids summer holiday) begins with a rainstorm.
Man. A country of 330 million people and these two guys are the only ones available? Give Biden a cup of tea and a nap. He’s served his time. As for Trump, it’s laughable that he’s still a viable candidate. How did you guys get here…
Watching Biden talk about Palestine is painful. You don’t get a medal for providing a nation with more target effective bombs and weapons. You’ve chosen your side. A side that lacks humanity and you do it for terrible ideological reasons. What is happening in that cursed spec of land is a human disaster no matter how you choose to dress it or where your memory begins. Indiscriminate killing of a people is wrong and their lives are no less precious than someone else. Sort this shit out because you can rather than talking hoarsely about your three point fucking plan.
Serves me right for even attempting to buy something from AliExpress. It was a moment of weakness. A moment of curiosity. You get what you pay for and in this instance it’s a nice watch that doesn’t work properly.
There is something magical about going to your public library and picking up three Ed Brubaker books you’ve not only never read but never heard of (mainly because I’ve been out in the wilderness for the last decade).
In the most white collar ‘injury’ ever, I’m carrying some coffee to the meeting and I trip on the stairs. My knees ultimately paid the price to save the coffee and I am totally feeling it now. Turns out those stairs are a known trip hazard (have caught others out which explains the useless stickers cautioning you). Can most certainly feel the pain now.
Ughh. Uber surge pricing can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. Happens to me every few months for no rhyme or reason.
Finished reading: Saints by Gene Luen Yang 📚
Weird ass weather in Toronto this weekend. Yesterday was rain all day. Today has been rainy, sunny, super windy and overcast across the day. It’s end of June and I expect, nay, demand heat and sunshine, all the damn time. Fists screaming at the sky!
Finished reading: Boxers by Gene Luen Yang 📚. This one didn’t hit as hard as American Born Chinese, which I remember (rightly) blew my mind. Having said that I’ve yet to read Saints, so that feeling might be still to come.
Finally got a replacement television for the family. We’ve been using a pretty old Sony Bravia for nearly 9 years now. That’s like 46 in television years.
It always felt like there was something more important to buy than a television. If the old was working, what was the point right? Well the old one stopped working, or at least the volume associated with voices and it became pretty unbearable.
I opted for an LG this time around, mainly on the back of WebOS (although not sure how they’ve ported the old Palm OS to televisions) and the price to features ratio.
The funny thing is that my kids have grown up with this one television for the entire life and I imagine they will have the same memories that I have for my family television set with the wood panelling and grey control panel for the 1980s.
🍦 Yesterday was the first ice cream of the season from Zuzu’s. They’ve changed the menu for the year (which is great) but the surprise for me was Tiger Tail, an orange and licorices flavour. Highly recommended if you can try it.
Today I leant that the single best thing about a Shake Shack burger (the bun) is a Martin’s potato roll and can get them from the supermarket…nice!
Finished reading: Kali by Daniel Freedman 📚. It’s been ages since I read a comic book like this. One of those rare breeds, a cinematic action comic books. Like a paper movie. The moment I saw the cover I knew I was in for a real treat. Everything inside did not disappoint.
I swear flu’s didn’t use to hit me as hard as they do now. It takes my body over five days to fully kick them and I feel exhausted at the end. Linked to getting older or because I’m in this part of the world my body is just not used to it all?
🤒 Day five of this stupid flu. So pedestrian. Blocked nose, but at least no headache and therefore need for medication, so that’s something.
📚 Just finished the second volume of A Distant Neighbourhood. I always knew that the work of Jiro Taniguchi would resonate (based on his artwork alone), but hadn’t realised how much better his work is for me now that I am in my 40s with a family of my own. The beats hit harder. All the things that attract me to life in Japan in the 60s are all present, but now the situations feel infinitely more relatable. Master of his craft and thankfully he has left a massive body of work to loose yourself in.
🤒 Day 3 of this bloody flu. Honestly I’ve been more ill in Toronto than I’ve been in a decade. Thankfully weekend is upon me, just need to get through tomorrow which will another long day.
The previous experiment failed. I tried having a separate status site for short posts but the flow was broken and the benefit wasn’t great, so I’m back to consolidating everything in one place again, under one banner.
Finished reading: Saga Volume 11 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚. Finally fully up to speed with this series. Fantastic series. Exceptional character development. Real imaginative designs for the characters. Exactly the kind of book I want to read in my 40s.
No idea why but decided to start watching House. I love Hugh Laurie in this show and while it’s not tight (22 episodes per season seems excessive) and a little formulaic I am enjoying the first couple of seasons so far.
🍻 It is definitely beer o’clock. Been one of those weeks which didn’t start great but slowly grew into a better place.
🪁 Took the kids kite flying yesterday and it was something that really brought me joy to watch (not at the start because Ryan was beside himself having lost his kite the day before), but eventually once they settled into it , 2 hours of running around flew by.
Finished reading: Reborn by Mark Millar 📚. This wasn’t that good. A combination of Millar and Capullo should have been dynamite…. I was not surprised. I certainly wasn’t invested in the characters enough.
Finished reading: A Distant Neighborhood by Jiro Taniguchi 📚. There are certain books that resonate most when read at the right time of your life. This book hits the right notes as someone in his forties being transported to when he is fourteen. So many emotions.
Zane’s early morning birthday party. I guess it’s good because it doesn’t disrupt people’s weekend too much…but it’s bad because it’s an early morning start to a Sunday.
The Bear, Season 3 Official Trailer. Cannot wait for this.
🚗 It’s been a while since I drove for 3 hours. Took a trip to Guelph and saw family and the latest addition which was fun.
I look at my two boys, one just turned 10 and the other 6 (and change) and I’m reminded how quickly they grow. Blink too fast and they’re all grown up.
MÄNNKITCHEN Pepper Cannon. $280 for a pepper grinder is steep!
Matty Matheson is the cooking equivalent of Aaron Draplin! I would not be surprised if they were related somehow.
I Want You Back (The Dropbox Remix). Finally. With this feature I might now have all my notes back in one single place again. Time to do some digital spring cleaning.
So walking around Montreal, at least the centre and I understand why this city was the ‘capital’. Such a pleasant city to walk around probably because the municipalities have something called taste, a quality that I find distinctly lacking in Toronto.
First time on a train in Canada since visiting 2 years ago. First time all the way to Montreal, so a longer journey, but am looking forward to hunkering down and getting some work done.
Finished reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 📚. The book begins life in Toronto, and set in my neighbourhood. Also, as it describes different parts of London and Toronto, I knew exactly what it was talking about. The inclusion of comic books was pure icing on the cake. Great read.
How often do you read two completely different things within a few hours and one cross references the other? Just delving into Station Eleven and it’s talking about Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbes that I honestly just read (for the first time) 2 hours ago. I mean, c’mon.
Bayer Leverkusen vs. FC Augsburg. Unbeaten across an entire season. Super impressive campaign.
Long May weekend. Thankfully the weather has been amazing. What am I planning? Cooking. Reading. Maybe a little writing and drawing.
Japan’s Lost Decade - An Economic Disaster. Great documentary and something I have always wondered. I remember when Japan’s economy was ranked 3rd after falling to China. Now it has officially become 4th.
📚 Currently reading Station Eleven. It’s a little odd because I keep expecting zombies to jump into the story because there are some serious Walking Dead vibes with Covid-19 memories.
Spending some time with different iPhone camera apps to see different features. I will say that night time photography has gotten much better. Turns out the Fjorden grip isn’t very well supported apart from the shutter button.
Finished reading: Saga vol. 10 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚. Loved the pirate ship. Loved Alana’s evolving haircut. This series is excellent on so many levels. Really missed having it in my life.
Finished reading: A Zoo in Winter by Jiro Taniguchi 📚 . Taniguchi’s work always transports me to Japan instantly. I relive my visit from over a decade ago. Except he choose time periods before I was born, so it’s close but not so close. I love his pacing and his line work.
Finished reading: Saga Vol. 9 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚. Twists and turns that are perfectly suited to the comic book medium.
Ben Elton on his novel Two Brothers. Also gotta love the internet, an interview with Ben Elton from 12 years ago.
Finished reading: Two Brothers by Ben Elton 📚. A truly difficult book to get through, mainly because of the parallels I can see unfolding between what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. The mechanics are different, but the result is the same. One group of people with power trying to wipe another group of people from the earth. The irony is too strong for me to handle without spiralling into a dark place (which is why I don’t like to write about this).
One of the great things about sampling books from the library is seeing if they are for you. Joshua Weissman’s first cookbook An unapologetic cookbook is for me. His second one, Texture over taste not so much.
I ultimately gave up on What’s Our Problem by Tim Urban. I bought the book on iBooks when it first came out. I downloaded the audiobook, but just couldn’t get through it all. Too much exposition to start with which is a shame as I tend to like his writing.
It’s been such a long time that I’ve really gotten into a novel. Silo was great, and only got better after I had finished ‘Season One’ of the show, but Ben Elton’s Two Brothers has been a thick slab of greatness. It’s also a really sad read considering this book starts 100 years ago and history repeats itself by the ancestors of the victims.
Finished reading: The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson 📚
I may have gone a little bit overboard at the library this week, but OMG, I am absolutely loving this!
Travel Book Series by Louis Vuitton. Didn’t know these were a thing, but they look exceptional. Bit pricey, but then again what else would you expect from LV.
A Journal of My Father Jiro Taniguchi on Mangasplaining. Rarely do you find something as comprehensive as take as what’s found on this page. I can’t wait to dig into this because it will no doubt let me dive further into this creator’s work.
Finished reading: A Journal of My Father by Jiro Taniguchi 📚. I haven’t read a great manga in a long time. This one doesn’t fully hit home for me, but there are definitely themes in there that touch a nerve. Great story and execution.
I get it now. The reason for Toronto’s limited bookstore culture is because the Public Library system is the single best thing the city has to offer. An incredible resource that is making my stay in Canada, infinitely more enjoyable.
TCAF 2024’s poster #2 is a more apt addition to the pantheon of posters for this event.
Took 6 kids to the library and got them all excited about books. One of my favourite Saturday evenings in a long time.
Finished reading: Saga volume 8 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚
☕️ Finally got my CoffeeJack gear. Got a whole bunch of stuff that make the coffee making experience that much better and interestingly very little mess.
Well that’s a shame. My new favourite weather app Overlook Weather was removed from the App Store and stopped working. Not sure if this only the Canadian store. Sent the dev an email, hopefully he can reinstate.
New Pearl Jam album, Dark Matter came out 2 days ago. Their 12th studio album. For me Ten is one of my favourite creations ever. I genuinely hope this has similar vibes…
📚 Finished reading: Saga (2012), Volume 7 by Brian K. Vaughan
Couple of things I am really indulging in is cookbooks. On the docket is Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple and Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street Kitchen. What’s awesome is moving these into Mela. The scanning feature is next level amazing.
One of my new routines is going to the library on a Saturday morning. Browse some books, do some thinking, bring some new knowledge back home. The gift that keeps giving.
The Self-Sufficiency Garden: Feed Your Family and Save Money. This is the sort of thing that I wish I could actually do. Huw Richards (the author) has a number of videos that goes through a typical garden and what it means to grow your own food (and importantly the economics, and it does blow my mind). Food is easily one of our biggest expense as a family.
I’ve started writing a single post on LinkedIn every week. It’s an experiment in publishing online that I’ve not tried before. At the end of the month I’ll have 4 items to compile and add into my newsletter, which can then be replicated also onto my site. I’ve clearly been playing the internet game badly. Time to see if this will make a difference.
📚Finished reading: How to Live by Derek Sivers
I have three apps in my iPhone doc, Drafts, Safari and Soulver. Version 3 for the iPhone dropped. It’s pricey but an insta-buy for me as I use this app so much.
Finished reading: Saga Vol. 6 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚
Finished reading: Saga Vol. 5 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚
Finished reading: Opus by Barry Windsor-Smith 📚
Finished reading: Saga Vol. 4 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚 Tearing through these at the moment. With the next volume should be half way caught up on this series.
Currently listening to Derek Sivers How to Live. Fascinating book that is essentially a modern day book on philosophies for life. It’s packed with many wonderful ideas that I can only imagine get better on multiple readings.
Surreal sitting here on a sunny day in Toronto (after rain and more rain). A conflict is about to begin in the Middle East that has been brewing for a while now. What exactly is the endgame with all of these conflicts? Seemingly there is none.
I know I keep harping on about the public library, but understand that I have never had such an expansive resource that captures everything that I am interested in directly at my fingertips. It’s intoxicating at this stage. Returned three books and got a cook book, which I might actually buy as it already feels like something I would use for years to come as inspiration.
📷 Took a while but I finally got the Fjorden package today. Been waiting on this for months. First impressions is that this really is a very well thought out package that has that tactile materials typically used in cameras. Pairing it was a delightful affair as well. Just need to run through all the tutorials to get the maximum from this thing.
🥘 Last night was a full butter chicken curry with fresh garlic butter naans .I can already see a few areas that can take this to the next level but was a good time.
I am currently struggling with the selection of my next project. Liberally speaking, I have around 12 different projects at varying stages of development. My first thought was to concentrate on those projects that are at a more advanced level of completeness, but that would be a mistake. The more I spent looking at the list the more I realised that what I might actually want to consider is focusing on those projects that could have the maximum impact to those around me, which will then enable me to continue to meander and create more things in the future, because of the knowledge that I am not just creating these things for myself and a few devotees who appreciate and get what I am trying to do.
Over the last few years, I have poured a lot of myself into my the two books I’ve released, Built Environment Compendium Volume.1 and Moon Racket! Ambient Hum. And while I believe that they’re good packages, sadly they have not penetrated an audience. Life is anything but a series of failures that we build upon and learn from. I genuinely believe that we should never dwell on failures. The work that I’ve created is mostly evergreen. You can read it now and in 10 years time and it will be (mostly) relevant.
So with that I have decided to focus my efforts on the following projects:
The first project is a something I have been meaning to develop since the summer. It’s partly a manual for all those looking to enter the construction industry but I am hoping to create a number of things that will look to enhance this project. The ultimate aim is to create a really useful resource for those interested to get a better understanding before they dive in and make considered decisions.
The Stet newsletter is going to be a different affair this time around as well. Rather than massive article that delves into a specific topic, I am going to collect different items of interest over the course of a month, sprinkle some commentary and send these out. This time however I am going to leverage LinkedIn this time around as I felt had the most interaction on that platform as it has a larger concentration of the type of people that are more likely interested in this kind of thought.
As I delve into the above, I will likely review and develop two other projects that are actually at a reasonably advanced stage of development, Automated Construction and Built Environment Compendium Vol.2. These projects can ultimately act as feeders into the newsletter while also exercising a different type of creative activity.
I have the same issue with Chris Ware. I can totally acknowledge the craft and design excellence that is on show, but it just doesn’t sing to me.
Also I am not a big fan of the massive tome that collects 400 pages of work under a cover. Convenient, yes. Readable, no.
In smashing through 12 issues of Saga in an afternoon, and reading through BWS’s Opus, it dawned on me, that while I absolutely love/adore BWS’s art, I am actually not that engrossed in his written work. It meanders too much and doesn’t grab my attention in the way that I personally enjoy reading. It’s me not you Barry.
Saga Merch. Not that interested in the t-shirts (slapping a cover, even though beautiful, onto a torso cover doesn’t make for a very good design). However might partake in one of those prints.
🌧️ I guess you can’t have it all. Last few days have been gloriously sunny. Today is a total rain day. Thankfully we made the most of it while it lasted.
Honestly, getting a library card has just opened a floodgate of printed material at my finger tips. The physical books are great but the digital access is just amazing. Having the opportunity to access both easily is a massive gift.
Finished reading: Saga Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan 📚. And the rest of the afternoon was spent polishing off this volume. God I missed a well written series. BKV has never disappointed. Interestingly, this series is now over 10 years old! Wonder what he’s been up to…
Finished reading: Saga Volume 2 by Brian K Vaughan 📚. That was pretty quick. I’ve had this in digital form for years, but the second I opened up the familiar format, I tore through it in an afternoon.
The latest instalment of The War on Gaza, from Joe Sacco, is totally on point.
An easy example of what makes me in awe of the work of BWS. His narratives however are harder to align with (sometimes).
Finally got my library card. Only took 18 months to sort out, but what a pleasant experience. Got to print something out and walk out with a rare copy of Barry Windors-Smith’s Opus and the first few volumes of Saga. A total of 7min walk from my house.
First day of my staycation. Nothing too crazy as the kids were home (PA day combined with Eclipse day). Highlight for me was the Moroccan chicken dish I made. It was excellent. What made it special was I noticed a flaw in the recipe (minor way of extracting the maximum flavour from the aromatics). So made the tweak and was rewarded for listening to Chef Jack.
While listening to Cal Newport’s latest podcast episode, he mentioned Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation (which is how social media is impacting kids) and the interview with Tyler Cowen that looks at this from both sides. Can’t wait to get stuck into both.
🌞🕶️ Honestly, throughout the day it was totally overcast here in Toronto. Come 5:30, sun is out and not a cloud in the sky. So annoying.
2024 Total Solar Eclipse Broadcast from NASA. Its hit Mexico, so a few hours to go before it hits America and Canada.
Can’t remember when I bought The 99% Invisible City, but this week away from work I started reading it and the first chapter/nugget was something I noticed on my walks around Toronto yesterday. Orange markings everywhere, denoting telecom lines.
A metric ton of spring cleaning happening at the moment. I have to get rid of so much stuff, but been moving across the house in a methodical manner. Tomorrow is when I put everything that needs to go in a pile.
ustwo games is rightfully celebrating 10 years of Monument Valley. It was an important game for me, so much so I have a print framed above my home desk. Can’t wait for MV3.
So I’m at Dark Horse Espresso Bar in Toronto. Barista, really not great. Coffee is from a company called Detour (roasted in Hamilton). Got myself a bag of Costa Rican beans that had an interesting profile - no idea how strong or weak it is. Really appreciating the information given on the Pilot Coffee bags which is perfect.
Been binge watching Come Dine With Me Canada. Really have missed this show and seeing a window into Canadian culture has been fun.
This Definitely Maybe print made me look. Keep seeing it behind Ste on his videos. It’s a cool line and hits my handwriting happy triggers as well.
Love this Seiko Kitchen Timer. Definitely in black.
The Overlook Weather app is a super simple but effective way of visualising the weather across the day. Widgets rarely make it onto my Home Screen, but this one was easy.
Emigrant: a person who leaves their own country in order to settle permanently in another.
This particular image of Pangea1 image made the rounds over a decade ago and has always stuck with me as a powerful idea given form. A world that is seemingly freed from natural borders. Squint a little and you can almost completely imagine the manmade borders blending away into nothingness. This is the world that I wished existed with respect to allowing people a way to roam and discover and make better lives for themselves.
When everything is interconnected, there is no possible way for you to be able to patrol or even try and control borders. It would be a completely useless exercise, in the way that Europe discovered back in 2015.
How would this world have developed differently with these new proximities and new borders. Imagine having the opportunity to travel across Pangea. What an incredible tapestry of human discovery that would allow. Then imagine the connectivity that would be possible. Would the world feel smaller or larger? Would we feel more connected or distant to each other?
At this moment in our collective existence, Earth does not resemble Pangea. Earth is separated by oceans, rivers and mountains. Humanity broke through these barriers, first across the sea and then in the air. Sadly humanity then decided to build other barriers in their place. First in the form of barricades walls and more recently in the form of paperwork and immigration laws.
To create a sense of unity for a collection of people, boundaries were drawn on a map and a flag is drawn high in the air to help those feel further connected. It’s a strong and emotive piece of design that connects a culture and represents ideologies and shared histories. People rally around the flag because it helps them visualise something otherwise nebulous and difficult to explain. Us. This flag represents Us, not them.
As I have travelled the world, I have tried to experience Pangea in my own way. It’s seemingly not as smooth if all the bodies of water were connected but I have been allowed to roam. In that movement I have strayed increasingly further away from the flags (and cultures) of my childhood. For a while I hoped to adopt a flag from any one of the countries I have lived in, only to realise that this was ultimately a futile effort. As my time in each country drew to an end so did the flags glow in my life.
For years I have wanted a flag to rally around that I can take with me wherever I went. A flag for emigrants like myself. During the last decade, a couple of new flag designs have been released to great fanfare that ultimately did not fulfil this gap for me.
When it was released a few years ago, I thought that the refugee flag perfectly captured the essence of something that anyone escaping their country on a boat would forever relate to. Clearly however this particular flag was not something that really represented my pampered emigration lifestyle.
As much as I love this design and what it means, it is not my flag.
I was excited for a while to see the International Flag for Planet Earth making the rounds several years ago. However the purpose of the flag, while novel and awesome, addressed a purpose I was not looking for. This is for a future Star Trek world that has moved beyond some of the very basic issues that we are currently grappling with back here on Earth.
I love the deep blue colour. The symbology in the middle however is a little lost on me. It’s not emotive enough to capture my imagination (in say the same way that the Olympic rings definitely do, although I certainly prefer the monochrome rings rather than the original coloured version).
This flag was also something that didn’t address my needs either.
From my own perspective, I have settled on the fact that I am a proud serial emigrant. A subtle nuance that likely nobody really cares about but one that I am more than happy to make and shout about.
And so, I challenged myself to create a flag that represents people like me. People who look to break through both natural and manmade boundaries and barriers that have been erected. A flag that represents people that move from one country boundary to the next. A flag that represents emigrants and those travelling the world as though it were Pangea.
This flag is not intended for a state with borders. This flag is meant to be flown by those of us who travel the Earth, emigrating from one place to another.
The flag itself is represented by 3 specific design elements:
The colour blue signifies freedom. The freedom to move and the freedom to travel across the world.
The colour blue also signifies our planet. It signifies the blue seas and blue skies of travel that allow you to make significant moves as an emigrant.
Going for a blue colour was not a difficult decision. While I did play around with a few colour ideas, the only question in my mind was what shade of blue I would decide upon. I did consider playing around with gradients, but that would likely break a few vexillological rules. It’s not the first blue coloured flag in the world, and certainly not the first with white accents on it. I did flirt with the idea of having it a darker blue but felt it gave off too much of a Scotland vibe which is not what I was looking for.
In the end I decided to concentrate on the colours that calms me the most. The blue you see on a clear day. Not a cloud in the sky. The future beckoning you to explore the world that you live in.
The pointed cross symbolises the 4 points on a compass, North, East, South and West, signifying the ability to choose your path and overall destinations.
An important consideration for the design was replicating iconic flags like the Swiss flag. It has a design element that is bold, strong and easy to identify from far away. Contrast plays an important role in helping define the design. The key element on the flag went through several iterations. Originally I was considering using a circle to identify the Earth itself with the angle (more on this in a bit) creating an interesting juxtaposition of shapes and colours.
The issue was this it just was not iconic in any way. It did not offer the same level of contrast. I quickly settled onto adding a compass element. Testing this out with an 8 point star, this felt busy. Keeping it to 4 points felt right, but at the same time, too simple. It did not bring with it enough of a story. This is where I combined the best of the original ideas with the new compass element and put the compass at an angle (I promise I’m getting there).
The final piece was moving away from an abstract compass, into something that was a little more explicit. Adding the internal elements of a compass was something that was subtle enough but provided the right amount of character to make it crystal clear what the design was representing.
The final piece of the puzzle was deciding on the size of the compass itself. My original thought was to split the entire flag in half, thus accentuating the angle itself. Making this smaller looked better, as it better expressed that the world can stretch in all directions.
How do you encompass everyone on the planet and their cultures that differ to vastly? By including a 23.4° angle. This angle mirrors the Earth’s axial tilt. One of the most important elements of science in our world that gives us our seasons and many (most?) of our cultural ideas. The angle is a celebration of our Earth and importantly the culture that we have created based on the gifts that it has provided.
Ultimately I want this symbol to be used by a community of Emigrants, like myself. I imagine a time when I will be able to offer physical representations of this design that can be used proudly.
My intention is to release this under a Creative Commons license, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
I will be sharing all the files soon with a set of ways to use it proudly and spark the conversation.
My ultimate wish is that maybe sometime in the future we can live in a world that while does not represent Pangea physically, at least is open for people to travel freely. A place that represents the ideals of this flag. A place where I can finally answer the question, ‘Where are you from?’, with the simple answer, ‘I’m from here. I’m from Earth.’
Pangaea means ‘all the lands’. ↩︎
Infinity Pro Magnetic iPad Stand & Holder has certainly caught my attention. Over 5 years after buying the iPad Pro, I’m still using that machine and finding interesting new ways to use it. Incredible piece of technology.
Took the kids for their first lessons at the YMCA today. Swimming and basketball. Every start is slow but I really hope they keep at it.
🍳 Finally got a non-stick pan after nearly 10 years of using a stainless steel pan exclusively. This one is dedicated to eggs exclusively.
Oona and Gage Brown ice dancers, to Nothing Else Matters is an absolute experience. The camera work on the video is also nothing short of spectacular.
Slow evolution of the flag. I put this one through the kids filter and seeing the compass was an important distinction that it just clicked (while the previous abstract version did not).
I’m sure I’ve posted this acapella version of the Game of Thrones theme song previously. Love this rendition so much, especially the limited dialogue they’ve incorporated into it (an awesome addition to the theme…I had to go back and double check if the original ever had this in there…of course it didn’t). But more than that, I miss a universal hit where everyone is buzzing about and talking about and a true highlight of a week.
Really loving Flags for Good, which has a ton of stuff that I want to support as well.
Anders Erickson merch. Big fan of Anders and his style of video and learning about drinks. The bear logo is also excellent branding.
Weekend is finally here. I don’t typically live for the weekend, but this week has been pretty rough on my health. It’s also been a brutally cold week as well (thanks Canada, it’s meant to be Spring)…no it’s not, but we’re nearly 50% through Unlocking.
First Espresso in Space. This is soo stupid it goes all the way around to being brilliant.
Sector Dive GMT, The Pen Addict Edition. Didn’t see this coming. I like the poker chip bezel and the GMT dial options.
Proton Mail App for the Mac. Oh hello, this actually a thing!
Really enjoying The Installer newsletter on The Verge. Kind of a tech version of Recommendo.
Left my seat for 5 min and come back and 2 goals have been scored in a matter of minutes. Pfff. That. Is. Annoying.
Finished reading: Wool by Hugh Howey 📚
Although pretty expensive, at $300, the Apollo Flashlight from Tactile Turn is like a buy it once and hopefully forget about it type of purchase.
For a while now I have been claiming that I am an atheist…but maybe that’s not right. Maybe a better term to use is that I am a Secular? Maybe that I am a Humanist?
Can’t decide which one of these prints from Francisco Fonsca I’m going to get. They’re all amazing.
🎵 Help in inhale. Mend it with you. Then we’ll come down. Have a hangover. I think I’m dumb. Think I’m just happy.
This Hanhart Pioneer One looks amazing. My only issue with it is that there is no option to add a steel bracelet. But the legibility, the massive crown, the details on the watch face are so unique it’s hard to resist.
🦷 Fuck me. Had my tooth extracted because it got infected…what an experience. Highly recommended! Channelling Pep, ‘More than you can believe’.
I am really struggling with this whole changing of the clock thing. Maybe because my internal body clock is all over the place anyway?
The weather in Canada is proper crazy. Snowing today (and -9°C). By Wednesday it will be sunny and +17°C.
I have absolutely missed writing articles. Formulating a series of thoughts and working through them, chiseling away can be a real source of joy.
Took the kids to jump their hearts out at an indoor trampoline park. It’s a rainy day and they need to get their energy out for sure.
Been writing my weekly article, which has reminded me of what I have enjoyed in the past of crafting something a little longer. Will be nice to have something substantial published once a week.
Got to play a little football (soccer) with the kids today. I was ‘coaching’ the underdogs, but really loved it. Team was loosing by 9-2, so joined the team and while I didn’t score anything and stayed mostly in goal, the little ones did us proud and won 10-9. Makes me feel like I should get more involved in coaching.
Got into an Uber this week. Was asked the same question I am asked every single journey I take, ‘Where are you from?’ I answer it differently depending on my mood at the time. Yesterday I was in a feisty mood clearly. I should try and write something more substantial.
Bit the bullet and got a new domain name to replace my Stet.Build domain name. I’ve always been pretty frugal with domain names, I have two registered, this is the third, but will let one relapse in August after 6 years.
Using the Astropad setup for the first time. One of the nice things is that there is an element of natural wriggle in the line. It is different.
I’ve got a couple of orders in for products that are in manufacture at the moment. What this tells me is that there is a reasonably bad planning on the side of the creators. You know Chinese New Year will impact your deliveries, so you make sure you have your 1 or 2 orders of the year, well before then. Otherwise you’ll be disappointing people that may or may not want to wait 4 months for something. Once you are outside the Kickstarter frame, you are meant to be a big boy, with big boy trousers. Learn to wear them.
Solskjaer interview doesn’t really give much away…I was hoping for a little more tbh, but nice to see him again.
Clear was updated to version 2.0 a month ago (haven’t used the app in ages) and now it’s free. And really customisable.
New iPhone 15 Pro Silicone Case. The sunshine one looks perfect for the summer.
From next week I think I’m going to concentrate on writing one article per week about a topic which is then posted on a Sunday. Throughout the week I’ll be posting random things on this site as it really fits that mould.
Been reading Silo very slowly but 2/3 of the way through the first book and it’s caught up with the end of Season 1 of the show. Book is much tighter than the show.
People in Toronto are slowly coming out of hiding. The weather is a little more forgiving so there is more life on the streets.
Stupid celebration as well. Idiot with a gun…that’s not really gun. Ah man Onana could have had it, so close.
Halland’s face after missing that sitter was priceless. I’m sure he’ll have more opportunities in the next half…damn that was intense.
Pilot Coffee Roasters is allowing me to really get into different types of coffee from this part of the world. I’ve always believed Costa Rica produces coffee that hits the right notes for me and honestly the current selection does not disappoint.
MW75 by Master & Dynamic. And here I thought the Apple Pro Max (or whatever they call them) were pricey cans.
Roast Magazine is clearly a magazine that is what I would love to have created myself.
Supernote. Oh my word. What the hell is this? I don’t think I’ve seen this before but it now officially on my list of tech to buy this year.
KUKU Maker uses a novel way to make coffee. Still on Kickstarter, 50% off. Tempting but for the $700 price tag.
PITZMANN II is an interesting looking watch from Korea. I would go for the blue dial, but tbh I would probably lean into a Christopher Ward or Farer…
World’s Fastest Camera Drone Vs F1 Car (ft. Max Verstappen). What a great project, one year in the making to create some incredible footage.
Simple Scan is a new(?) app from Agile Tortoise. The icon isn’t great but looks like another solidly made app.
When I joined Micro.blog, over 7 years ago now, I rediscovered my love for writing on the web again. Micro.blog has a simple interface that doesn’t care what the number of characters you intend to use or whether you want to use a title or not. Just write and publish. The freedom was liberating.
This has worked well for me but I was recently finding that I would self regulate some of my output. I felt like sharing some random thoughts throughout the day which felt out of place on my site. I tend to like to capture certain kinds of thought that I share. Hobbies I am getting into. Discoveries I have made. Kid related activities. Things that I can come back to in the future and relive.
This other stream of thought felt more ephemeral. Fleeting. Captured because I will forget them and writing them and publishing them allows me to give them a little bit of weight. Last year I got a Status.lol account and this seemed to scratch this itch. The issue however was that I didn’t own the output. Enter Micro.blog’s new pricing model, I now have the option to have up to 5 sites. I sorted a Status site that does what my Status.lol was doing.
I get one notification on my phone. It tells me how much more sunlight we’re getting in the day. I get it when I wake up and it puts a little smile on my face. Soon I’ll be turning it off as the number won’t really matter.
Jose’s Football Round Up. I wish Connor did this on a weekly basis. Someone needs to pay him to do this.
$22/month CAD for the new Atoms app by James Clear. What a joke. Totally out of touch with value. Just crazy.
Back to walking to and from work. It was hard-ish this week (in that I felt it) so hoping that this gets easier in a month or two. Hopefully I can get 4 months of this.
🐶 Maybe it’s because I tend to take the bus to work, and today I’m walking, but ALL the dogs are out today.
Alright. Winter is ‘officially’ over, at least in my mind. Time to get more activity and less food. Stress levels down. Let’s go.
Season 2 of Mr.Robot started slow for me but by episode 7 it was showing its genius. Great show that you need to trust that it will reward you with good story development. Because it will.
An internet star is born. Zane’s start to making videos (2 more than his old man ever did).
Been a while since I’ve listened to an episode of Pod Save the World - easily my favourite news related podcast. I have mixed feelings about the ongoing war in Ukraine (and Western rhetoric) when you juxtapose that against the war in Gaza. Both senseless and a tragedy to those in these countries. My issue is with the Western governments that support Ukraine and Israel at the same time. One is the aggressor while the other the one doing the aggression.
What the hell is the FN Pen 2.0 by Stabby Labs. Deeper dive needed…
That took a while to get a goal. Chelsea could have buttoned this up ages ago, but they certainly didn’t rise to the occasion.
Yesterday was brutally cold. Took the kids out to get a pastry from Le Beau and could not make it home fast enough, even though it was barely a 5min walk. Kids (and probably myself) looked like we got slapped silly with rosey red cheeks. Thankfully that cold is subsiding this week.
There is something liberating about having a dumping ground of a site. Where the posts can be ephemeral and fleeting. They are of the moment and that’s it really.
The Farer Foxe (World Timer) looks amazing. Although not in the market for a green watch dial, this thing is amazing.
That’s not great. Just noticed that the price of the Stet domain has gone up in price. I was already not particularly happy with the price I was paying for it, so will likely switch to something else when it expires in August.
I seem to have missed this announcement entirely. They had me at Cousin. Also not heard of Wesley Burt, has some strong Phil Noto vibes in there.
The last 6 months have been dedicated to a major project at work. It’s been both satisfying and incredibly taxing period that I will look back on with some fondness and relief that it’s over. It has taken a hit on everything else in my life, so I’m really looking forward to putting my head up again and seeing what else is going on around me. Timing is great as the weather is slowly turning a corner and looking forward to the start of unlocking.
Of course someone like Joe Sacco would be able to deliver something meaningful about The War on Gaza. I try to keep away from this subject as it really does take over my mind and I cannot disconnect from it.
Logo Rhythm by Jamie Ellul. Haven’t backed a Kickstarter in years. This might get me out of retirement.
Astropad have released version 2 of their Rock Paper Pencil iPad Screen Protector and Apple Pencil Tips.
Was looking to buy this a couple of weeks ago, glad I waited.
The BIRD1 brewer costs a cool $360 (US) and introduces the world to a unique brewing mechanism. It is a cross between a French press and an AeroPress, made from premium materials and looks to bridge a brewing gap between pour overs and espressos.
This review from Lance Hedrick pits it against a whole bunch of alternative brewers trying to replicate the outcome (some using a similar-ish method, but none as elegant, or quite the same). The quick take is that while the profile can be replicated with other techniques/brewers, none as elegant as the BIRD.
It is currently out of stock- which does not come as a surprise. Smaller businesses, whether they are micro-brand watches, stationary, iPhone accessories or in this case coffee brewers typically have this issue if they have anything remotely successful.
BIRD stands for Brew In Reverse Direction and is a non-bypass brewer. ↩︎
Even the birds are confused by the weather. It’s the middle of February and I can hear a bunch of birds chirping away in the background. It’s spring already? Nope. Not yet.
Apparently Sprudge is one of the big websites surrounding coffee. It’s not the best put together web experience, but it does have a few interesting elements. Firstly, they are the Apple Maps guide to coffee (already bookmarked a few places in Toronto), and there is a book, The New Rules of Coffee, that I’ve just ordered as well (breaking my no new books until I’ve finished reading other books on my list self imposed rule of 2024).
Spent a little time this morning exploring the coffee industry websites. Fascinating to me that there is a ton of industry information out there, but I wasn’t really able to find the Daring Fireball of this industry…
Always leave the house, no matter what the weather is like and try and clear my mind.
Got outside when I don’t know what I want to do.
When I don’t know what project I want to work on.
When I don’t know what book I want to read.
What show I want to watch.
What food I want to cook.
What podcast I want to listen to.
What post I want to write.
What picture I want to take.
Just go outside and let the fresh air do its thing and clear the fog.
Hover bill just got paid and I was reminded that this site is 7 years old, which is pretty wild to me that I’ve totally stuck through it all and the site has become and important outlet for me. It’s all life related posts but I guess that is the whole point of a personal site, capture what’s important to you at the time and pass it on to your future self.
Definite bonus being some others might be up for joining you a little along the way.
Signs of my age I’m sure, but while I’ve heard of Taylor Swift, and keep hearing how she’s ruining the NFL (or whatever), I could not name you or hum a single song by her.
Not sure when this happened, but the addition of page assist to Procreate is such a natural way to creating comics. Just an incredible application that continuously removes friction from the creation process.
Working on the February strip. I am looking to add some backgrounds, so will try a few options to see what some regular elements might be.
Have heard a lot of great things about Mr.Robot, so checking out the first few episodes and it hasn’t disappointed. I like the fact that it appears to be pretty self contained 4 season series.
Toni Cornell Performs Stunning Rendition of Peal Jam’s “Black”. That is a hard song.
Every year in February I watch Groundhog Day. And every year Yasmine asks me why. Its such a great movie.
It took a while but finally got the kids Nintendo Switch repaired (the HDMI output was not working on the Switch itself). They can now play on the main screen (which itself is definitely due an upgrade).
On further consideration the Fjorden Pro actually might be a better call because it works like a normal camera (half press to focus etc). My only gripe is the disc battery which is not the most elegant solution but I guess the functionality that you get is worth it?
Seriously eyeing the SnapGrip. What I like about it is that it has about three functions (battery, stand and shutter button).
Although not written about this, until now, 2024 is my year of health. I’m in my 40s so it’s important that I give this aspect of my life the care and attention it deserves. Health includes mental and physical health, but for the moment there is a little bit of a focus on the physical side of things. I am looking to introduce key products that can slowly help me in this direction.
The first was a smart digital scale. What’s fascinating to me about this technology is that it’s able to record my BMI, water content and a slew of other data points.
The one data point that has really stuck with me is my metabolic age data point. Needless to say my body is indicated as older than I actually am. This single data point is enough motivation for me to really take my health super seriously.
The other data point is my water levels. Not a surprise I have less water than is within the ‘normal’ zone. So I’ve gone and bought a YETI bottle (the large one) so that I can keep guzzling water throughout the day.
For both of these things I’m going to concentrate on tracking trends. Don’t care how much, just as long as everything is trending in the right direction.
Vitesse Brief by WaterField Designs has jumped up on my list of briefcases I must get in 2024. I am such a sucker for great bags and the navy one is on point.
Listening to Toni Cornell’s Far Away Places. The girl gets soo much rope from me, but legitimately she does not need it. She’s inherited her dad’s pipes.
It’s subtle and you can barely tell at the moment, but look closely and you can see the sun is coming out a little sooner and the light shines earlier. Its subtle.
🔫🌹🌹🔫 Chinese Democracy is by far Guns’n’Roses best album. Even though released in 2008, the sound transports me to being a 15 year old.
While it’s easy to be down on humanity, think of all the music, the art, the writing, the comics, engineering, architecture, video games, software, characters, worlds, excellence that is found throughout the world in all kinds of forms. It’s sometimes all to easy to focus on what is wrong and forsake (or certainly take for granted) all the magic that we can create.
Meal prep for the week. I’m really loving creating a whole slew of dishes and sneaking a few portions as food for another time. The freezer has 4 different dishes ready to go. This is No.5 and I have another veggie dish tomorrow (soaking the lentils today).
Been getting into a bunch of curries at the moment. Did a West African beef curry yesterday and a Korma today (although was missing some cashew nuts). Have some cool stuff to look forward to making this weekend so that all the cooking for the week is done.
Looking to get Zane into game development…but where to start? Any suggestions that have worked and stuck with kids?
I absolutely love Barry Windsor Smith. His art takes me back to my early teens and discovering comics. You could tell that this was a master (30 bloody years ago). His Eisner winning GN Monsters is a bit of a slog. The story and the characters, 150 pages in, are just not landing for me. It is incredibly well illustrated though.
Finished reading: Love & Vermin by Will McPhail 📚
Currently reading: What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies by Tim Urban 📚.
The Antidote is an interesting book, but only when the author is writing about his experiences with different people or going on an adventure to find out more. The journalist pieces are what came through as the strongest (or certainly the most interesting) parts of this book.
One thing that I have found myself tiring of, is the style of writing that is forever quoting random pieces of work, or sayings or whatever from people around the world, across time to enforce a point. It bores me because there is plenty of examples in the opposite direction. The occasional, important quote that is central might be acceptable but the barrage is tiring. I’ve found Ryan Holiday is the king of this style of writing, which is why I’ve not picked up his latest book.
Having said all of that, I think this book serves as the planting of the ideas for his next book, Four Thousand Weeks which delves even further into our mortality, a subject that is clearly on the author’s mind.
Finished reading: The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman 📚
Airshow is my favourite podcast app. It’s lightweight. Supports notes/chapters (if they are included). Is an excellent aside to an RSS feed reader. And it’s got a new icon.
Ever since watching The Bear I have been on a mad R.E.M kick. Out of Time being top of the list. Will likely follow that with Automatic for the People and then close it off with New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Hell, add Up to that as well (although nowhere near as strong).
Now that Ryan is growing older, some of his new interests are coming through. Clearly the boy loves how food is put together and importantly its presentation. So been getting him involved in the cooking process. First as an observer and soon will start getting him to help - staying away from anything sharp.
🏂🏻 First proper snow in Toronto. Maybe this means the kids will get a chance to go tobogganing down the hill tomorrow (they’ve been waiting for months).
First tech purchase of 2024, a smart scale. Tons of data to wade through. Interestingly my overall weight hasn’t changed since 2018. I know it went down briefly in 2020, but regained it all when work went crazy towards the end of that year.
At the tender age of 44, having completed GCSEs, A-levels, a University Masters degree in Engineering, written countless reports, a book, this site (and all its iterations), and now I’m writing an English test. Thanks Canada.
Nice overview of all the stationery People ACTUALLY Bought in 2023 from Jetpens. For myself, my favourite stationary purchase of 2023 was a couple of Red Tennesse pencils, along with a Staedtler pencil extender.
Watching The Bear. What a fantastic show. You do need to get through the first 10min in episode 01, which are a little intense, but after that an absolute delight. Also, GREAT soundtrack.
Currently reading: The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman 📚. I’ve tried reading this book before. The first chapter suffers from that meandering nature that similar books suffer from. Saying things across 25 pages that might have been better served in 12.
Get past that however and it’s shaping out to be a good read.
If ever there was a way to reinforce the 6 seasons, we woke up today with a light dusting of snow everywhere. Winter has begun for (for the next two months).
Final post of 2023, also 1 more post than my most posts in a year (462). Wishing everyone a happy new year.
I think those geniuses at IKEA have finally cracked the loose tea steeper puzzle. How to make one that does not suck and is easy to clean. But wait, there’s more. The website reveals that it also it acts as a drip catcher! $3.99 (Canadian) for 2.
N.Cortolezzis & R.Giesen please take a bow. Well done.
While I only just scraped by 2023 reading goals, I’ve decided to go down a very different route for 2024. In 2024, I will not buy any new books. Rather I have 12 lovely books that I bought over the years, that I either never finished or never started. I also have a few books that I need to reread to extract information from. So here’s the 2024 list:
The rereads are:
In recent times I have found it pretty difficult to get into fiction, save for the Silo trilogy, which I am still working my way through and enjoying. I have not finished reading Nausica by Miyazaki or Monsters by Barry Windsor Smith, but am halfway through each of these.
My new favourite beer, the triple NEIPA from Collective Arts, Fuzzy Face. One beer and you can feel it. Just one.
2023, in 7 minutes from Vox. Still processing.
Father points unlocked. Kids (Zane mostly) watched A New Hope for the first time and followed along all the way. Asked the right question, is there only 1 Death Star? Can’t wait for Empire.
🎄 Merry Christmas everyone. Time for the annual ritual of tricking my kids that a fat man with a beard is breaking into our house while we sleep. Also he’s always watching you. But he bears gifts.
Don’t know how many more years of this we are likely to have, but we’re on borrowed time.
First strip in 6 years maybe? Experimenting with a bunch of stuff at the moment, including hand lettering.
Trying something different. Digital ink. A completely stress free way of moving from my pencils into the final piece. Sure something might be lost, but actually a whole lot more is gained.
Watched The Creator. Visually, one of the most stunning sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a while. The design of the world, its vehicles, the technology, the robots themselves, all stunning. The plot had a few weak spots that took me ‘out’ of the movie but overall, an excellent watch.
☕️ Just when you think you know most of the possible ways to brew a cup of coffee you find out about the BIRD. Super interesting product, and has a real satisfying spin.
🎄 The holidays begin now. It’s been a long time coming (since the start of August) and I am properly running on fumes. Time to reset and recharge the batteries.
☃️ Nope, didn’t imagine things. This time last year there was snow on the grown over a week ago and I was wearing my duck boots. Yet here we are and now snow in sight.
Lego season has begun in the house. First up was the Lego Luigi starter set with the kids. Plenty more where that came from.
🎄 It started 4 years ago. After leaving the Gulf I decided to start making White Russians in the lead up to Christmas. Small bottle of vodka and a small bottle of Kahlua. Couldn’t finish my drink tonight and my tradition is over. Fun while it lasted.
Been watching Pluto TV all week. Really love what they have going on here. First show on the list, King of Queens.
It’s been a pretty mentally and physically challenging period of time. I guess not having a break since the start of August is slowly starting to have its toll on me. I’ve always struggled with taking short breaks because I don’t know how well they work for me.
I am soo done with machined pens. Total waste of money. 10 years of hunting for the ideal holder for my favourite refills has given me a handful of good-ish products but all with plenty of flaws. So disappointed.
I wrote this introduction while in Tampa this summer and its great to finally share it because it captures my thoughts on this world I’ve created.
Moon Racket! is the story of two buddies living on the moon, making noise and eating cheese. It is also the story of my attempts at learning how to draw and write a comic series.
Comics as a medium has been a passion of mine since my early teens. Sadly I never really got around to the actual act of writing and drawing comics, rather spent time circling around the activity itself. And so it was that all of my previous attempts never amounted to any completed comic work - save a four page story for a Guardian/Observer newspaper comic competition called Coffee Beans. To help me fight through this inherent procrastination, the barrier for Moon Racket! was purposely set very low. The result was that for nearly a decade this world and it’s characters would be my main creative outlet. But lets start at the beginning.
At the start of 2010, I had a serious case of brain crack. Brain crack is a term coined by CGP Grey in an episode of the excellent podcast, Hello Internet, ‘…the longer we procrastinate on something we want to do, the more our brains build up expectations of how amazing it’s going to be. It’s like crack for your brain’. The project was based on an idea I had, after a hazy summer evening out in Athens when I was 21. I couldn’t let this idea go but I also couldn’t move it forward in a meaningful way either. Two events would enable me to break my brain free and allowed me to create my first real body of comic work.
Throughout the 2000s, my creative adventures had been spent developing and honing my web and graphic design skills. I had started life on the internet to help me publish my comic work, the issue was that I fell in love with the web itself. The web combined a lot of what I loved about comics in the first place, but in a vastly different format. The web in the early 2000s was an exciting place. I swam in this space for years until the internet landscape changed (which I attribute to Twitter and Facebook) and it stopped being exciting. Another piece of technology would also come out around this time that offered another creative avenue to explore, the iPhone. With the introduction of the iPhone 4, what was possible on this mini computer in your pocket was starting to expand. I decided that I would try and use this this $880 (the going rate with taxes) device to create a comic, each panel would be the size of the phone screen. While the idea was well conceived, it was beyond ambitious.
This entire series of characters was borne from a few images drawn on an iPhone 4 back in 2012. These were done using the crudest of styluses available at the time, which was a thin aluminium tube with a soft sponge attached to the end of it. The key elements of Corgan were there, the booties, long eyes and circles at all the joints. As I drew these characters, their world started to come into view for me. They lived on the moon. The moon was ostensibly made of cheese (and that would never run out of course). After realising that the little moon worm I had drawn was an organic being, he would need some form of air bubble around him to breathe (please don’t argue with my logic, it’s fragile). Very quickly however I hit technological limits. The combination of the crude stylus, the tiny screen and the poor feedback they both provided (when compared to my trusted Muji 0.38mm blank ink pen and Midori paper notebooks), would mean that I would stop this experiment early on. I count the experiment as a success, because it allowed me to create a new world to get lost in and finally shifted my attention to something different, setting my brain free.
In the early 2010s, my life was transitioning from being a single man, to a fiancé, then husband and finally a father. I was living in the Middle East during this time, which was also going through its own transition as a region, as part of the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring started of as a series of anti-government protests and uprisings that started off in Tunisia and would quickly spread to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Nearly a decade late, the chars of that movement are being felt in Syria which erupted into a civil war shortly after. I felt powerless to stop the strong humanitarian disaster that was unfolding around me, culminating in the image of Alan Kurdi washed up on the shore. An image which still haunts me to this day. My brain would retreat and search for a creative outlet to help me manage through this time.
I can’t even remember how or why I would end up calling the entire series Moon Racket!. What I do remember is that the form of logo was crystal clear in my head once I had settled on the name. From this word mark, I originally intended for the series to be filled with onomatopoeia (which is the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named). I don’t think it happened as often as I would have wanted, but that is certainly something I am looking to lean into more in the future.
Many decisions, that defined the Moon Racket! world would also arrive in a completely organic manner. It felt appropriate that the technology used throughout the series would be locked in the 1980s, while the architecture that was on display would be of the future. Strangely (even to me), the Moon and surrounding planets are characters themselves, complete with eyes, arms and hands.
In developing the the style of art, I went off what I felt looked right, a tactic laced with struggle and self doubt. It took a while to kick my propensity of cross-hatching and tried to create a vernacular that was is my own continues. Having never previously really spent any time developing a dynamic cartoony style of art before, the art would evolve the more I drew. My annoying perfectionism would take a back seat as I kept reminding myself that nobody was paying any attention, so it didn’t really matter. Keep moving. Keep drawing one strip after the other.
Even though he was the basis of the entire series, I struggled a great deal with the design of the Corgan character. In developing the shape of his body I would struggle with shape and form. I would keep adding new elements to his body, but would never feel truly comfortable in his depiction, until recently. By contrast Corgan’s third iteration, which has arrived years after I stopped drawing him in the manner he is presented in the this volume, now practically draws himself and rolls off my pencil.
Unsurprisingly the characters and this world, never really took off beyond a limited number of readers. This was expected, considering it would take me over a year to write and draw 20 strips. I didn’t publish nearly enough to build a habit with anyone, but mainly with myself. I ran out of energy, as things in my professional life started to take over and I need to focus a lot more on that side of my life. I decided to put the series on hiatus and capped it creatively, published in March 2017, with a movie poster style image capturing all the characters. The characters would come out of retirement briefly in 2021. I finally was able to fulfil my original vision of creating these on an electronic device. This time it was a 12.9” iPad Pro with an actual stylus (the Apple pencil). After I finally learnt how to draw and colour these characters, I ended up taking an extended break from them.
I could not imagine that these characters would stay with me as long as they have, but maybe that is down to the fact that I have not said all that I wanted to say. The next evolution of the Moon Racket! world is not in the artwork, rather it will be found in the type of topics that I would like to discuss. In defining the direction I want to take these characters in, I am reminded of my mother’s admiration for the political fables presented in Kalīla wa-Dimna, and using it as inspiration for future stories.
For now however, it feels good that the original groundwork for these characters and their world is collected in a single place.
Moon Racket! Ambient Hum is available to buy as a paperback.
Buy the paperback on Amazon ➔
The project for 2023 was the Moon Racket! collection, Ambient Hum. This one has been long in production. It’s nice to have a single place with all these stories collected.
After a little over a year in Canada, I can definitely say that I honestly believe that Toronto has some of the worst graphic design of any city I’ve lived in. I think I’ll start taking some photo evidence to demonstrate. It’s soo, soo bad.
☕️ It took me a while, but I finally found my coffee beans purveyor of choice in Toronto, Pilot Coffee Roasters. Great quality. Solid selection. My only suggestion is increasing their Japanese tea selection (looking for some Hojicha).
It takes an incredible amount of effort to put a book together. My plan is to release one a year into the wilderness. Increasingly this is not about sales (because I’m doing it all wrong if it was), but it’s about seeing a project through. How it fares in the big cold world is beyond my control.
Things have to move around a little once the final trade dress constraints come in. Book has been ready for several months, but needed to get this cover sorted first. Now time to pull it all together.
The cover is finally done! Lots to talk about, but just super happy that all the pieces of the book are now complete.
Inside Real Madrid’s $1BN Stadium Upgrade. Great overview of a stadium that looks completely insane, in the best possible way. The most fascinating part for me is tracking how much this site has changed through its history. Where do they go from here - because you know at some point they will likely have to.
🥃 White Russian season has begun. Normally the month before Christmas I get myself a bottle of vodka and khalua and pretend I’m ‘The Dude’.
Eco House designed to Passivehaus premium. Since putting a pause in the work around Stet, as I settle into a new life in Canada. This story of building integrated PV is exactly the type of thing that I miss the most. Deep dives into the built environment and everything around it.
I came home yesterday and the kids had done some remodelling of our living room. A household with two young boys is by its very nature a very dynamic space. Having said that we have too much stuff in the wrong place. Will take some time this weekend to sort that out.
Finished reading: The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicolas Cole 📚
James O’Brien Vs The Government Part 2. Great take by O’Brien who has such an incredibly calm way of breaking down a subject and putting a governments feet to the fire. 13 years of Conservatism in the UK is a long time.
The first two chapters of my long gestating story Colours is out. Conceived some 25 years ago, I never was able to write large enough chunks of it to share. Most of act 1 is mapped out, so will hopefully be able to share more soon (along with some drawings I’ve done in the past that still work.
Onyx stood at the entrance of the chamber, he could see her a little better. The candles offered some light, but it was dim. Azure was sitting slumped on her throne. She had her hair up in a huge bun on her head, it looked like a bees nest. She looked frail, wrapped herself in a thick cloak.
“Millions flock to this place. They are not here for me. No, they are here for themselves. And yet here you are child, my first visitor in as long as I can remember. Come child. Come closer to we can discuss our future. for mine is linked to yours.”
Onyx moved closer into Azure’s view, “Hello, Azure. It’s me, Onyx.”
“Onyx? Onyx who?”, she said.
Onyx walked closer to her, knelt down and held both her hands together, “Let me remind you.”
Part 07 of 31
At first I was a little disappointed in the scroll wheel of my Anywhere MX 3S mouse. It didn’t have the functionality of the previous version that allowed you to select ratchet or smooth scrolling by pressing down. Turns out this feature is now in the software giving you precise control. Amazing.
🍗 At Chick-Fil-A because that’s what Ryan wanted all week. It’s easy food with little fuss for the kids I guess.
It must have been in the Uber, last week I lost a close companion, my Anywhere MX mouse which I’ve had since Dubai, nearly 8 years. You know you absolutely love a product that you go out and buy a replacement straight away. The new version has USB-C, is more responsive, a slightly different mouse button, but crucially keeps everything that was great. Compared to the Apple Mouse, for me this is the gold standard of computer mice.
Onyx was standing in front of an incredibly tall and ornate gate that stretched high into the sky. On either side of the main entrance, the walls were covered in animal statues. Baboons, cats, monkeys, falcons, hippos and lions, all intricately connected with each other.
Onyx followed the flow of the crowd, allowing them to guide him inside. Surprisingly the building looked much larger on the inside than it did on the outside. The main entrance opened up onto a series of halls connected to one another that got larger as they got deeper into the building. Tourists lined every available space in the hall, they bobbed en masse, like waves in the ocean.
He continued with everyone for a little while, moving from hall to the next, deeper and deeper inside he went, until he peeled away into a corridor to the side. The difference in activity between the main halls and this corridor was stark. He was the only person there. He walked alone for a little while coming to a tiny chamber filled with candles, and there at the end sat Azure.
Part 06 of 31
So Zane did this yesterday and I am absolutely floored by what he’s created! The thing I am most impressed by is the storytelling. An essential part to any comic narrative and he’s done so well here.
🥘 Mega day for cooking. Got an amazing chilli con carne done (but with butternut squash, chorizo, beans and a bunch of veg). Then made an epic Greek souvlaki feast complete with fresh pita, tzatziki, chicken gyros and fries. 💪.
Onyx knew that he had to react quickly. His consciousness instantly reverted back to his body, he got up and began sprinting. In that same moment his Wings also began their decent, falling through the air and attached themselves onto Onyx’s back, fusing together with in a bright flash.
He traversed through a wasteland, teeming with people. Onyx had been here before, when it was still teeming with a different kind of life. He knew this spot well. While it’s grandeur remained, in the form of scale, it’s vibrancy had completed faded away.
Onyx waded through hundreds, maybe thousands of ‘tourists’ that walked around aimlessly, gawking at the remains. Giggling. Taking pictures. Some studied remains with intensity. It was a circus. It did however offer a smoke screen that cloaked the main attraction.
Part 05 of 31
🍳 I’m sure there is an app or website out there that does this already but I wouldn’t mind something to track my cooking adventures. Add in some tags like cuisine, if it was vegetarian or not, success or failure, delicious or not and that’s a pretty awesome feature. Add a photo.
Trying to separate the signal from the noise was where Onyx’s wings came into their own. From above it was trivial to zero in on zones of potential that would otherwise remain unnoticed. They gave him the ability to not only see far but across the spectrum.
In his hunt for remaining colours, Onyx had been lurking on the fringes of the decay for what seemed like an eternity. Was it time to start making his way further into the inner circles? Was this seemingly fruitless search proof that his work in the Decay was finally done?
And then he saw it. The faintest of auras. Blink and you miss it.
Part 04 of 31.
The Decay covers an immense urban expanse, tied together through a network of makeshift huts, small shacks and a sea of rubble, the remains of buildings of every architectural definition, either empty and abandoned. Yet within this urban decay, a form of life was flourishing. Millions upon millions of tourists flocking to see and interact with the rubble, paying tribute to what was.
Even among all this chaos, there was no real vantage point anywhere to be found. For that, Onyx had to rely on his eyes in the sky, his Wings. He tilted his head up, his eyes rolled back and turned a cloudy white. He was no longer on the ground but soaring high above.
Part 03 of 31.
The hilltop he was sitting on seemed a little less faded than the rest of the expanse around him. There was a tiny hint of colour that was left behind, like the dying embers of a fire. Onyx took the glove of his right hand and pushed his hand into the sand beneath him. He could barely register any activity at all.
He removed his hand from the sand, brought it just before his face, turning it slowly, inspecting it to see if he had missed something. He then dusted his hands against each other. Dust exploded briefly into maroon coloured flecks of life, moving and dancing in the air, before falling back again onto the ground without a trace. Grey and lifeless.
Part 02 of 31.
Onyx decided to sit down. The terrain was different here as the ground fell gradually away him. He looked across at the Decay that spread itself, seemingly forever. Ashes and rubble from past glories formed a vast sea of grays and whites. The movement from dust clouds made the world around him undulate. For brief moments the dust would clear a little and let him get a better view of his surroundings. This would be swiftly replaced with new dancing dust clouds that would engulf him completely, making it difficult to see very far in front of him.
Part 01 of 31.
The first of November is when I like to write my short story of the year. This year I’m finishing off a story I started 3 years ago but never finished. The outline is complete so I’m not starting from scratch. 50 words-ish a day, for 30 days.
Yesterday made an awesome sheet pan pizza. Today I promised Ryan I would make some sweet and sour chicken (I’ve not made this one for them before), so this will be an experience for them.
💥🎧 So loud. Toronto is so loud. Mainly the stupid vehicles that roam the streets blurting out unnecessary sounds. Whether it’s the engines of cars, the fire truck or ambulance sirens, the horns of the streetcar when a dickhead doesn’t stop for the passengers getting off (I’m ok with this). So, so loud.
Fuuuucccckkkk. I’ve been doing it all wrong. Picked up a book today that makes so much sense and has showed me why and where I have been going wrong with Stet.
Had I read it 3 years ago at the peak of Stet, I likely would have moved a lot differently. In hindsight I followed the wrong advice - or at least it didn’t work for me. I don’t feel bad about the work I did (I’m actually very happy with the work itself), but everything around the work? I totally messed up.
I have been waiting to jump back into that particular project when I had the right ideas to move it forward. The reality is that I think I will be there pretty soon. So that’s exciting.
I’ve been avoiding the news media because I genuinely don’t believe they are being objective, rather the messaging is absolutely weighted. Novara Media is a refreshing and mature take on the conversation.
Finished reading: How to make the best coffee at home by James Hoffmann 📚
Finished reading: Diary of an 8-Bit Warrior by Cube Kid 📚 This wasn’t actually read by me as this was read to my Zane. His first book.

As a big fan of field watches, the 02SERIES Field from Studio Underd0g is a real looker and extremely unique. My only complaint would be the 18mm strap and maybe the overall size being a tad small.

I’ve been on a serious food nostalgia trip this weekend. Made Lebanese rice pudding. The only missing ingredient was mastic (which I’m sure I can find somewhere in Toronto, just haven’t found the place yet).
2024 Total Eclipse Map by The Eclipse Company is a great visual of where the next total eclipse is coming in 2024. Straight through Toronto! Hopefully it won’t be cloudy that day.
I can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to follow what is unfolding in the Middle East.
I used to harbour hopes that the wider international community might be able to find a way to help mediate things. That’s just not going to happen. The reality is that they have to find a way to live with each other and it has to come from both of them.
The world will watch the coming slaughter, mostly in silence. The response will be unrelenting and extreme. It’s not even a surprise. It’s incredibly harrowing to know what is coming and be helpless to offer any help on an individual level.
It’s not about winning an idealistic cause.
It’s about people.
People, any people, living side by side.
People raising their children.
People taking their kids to school.
People getting married.
People growing up.
People getting older.
People falling in love.
The world broke a lot more in the last week.
Not going to lie, I’m really, really happy that the bird site is dead. I will say that Instagram has definitely taken over that zeitgeist role (not for me of course). For me, I am more than happy with my little corner of the internet.
Happy 🇨🇦 Thanksgiving. Today was the first dinner party we’ve thrown in a looong while. All Greek menu, roasted lamb which chestnut like potatoes in the oven, Greek salad (done the proper way with an amazing dressing), freshly baked pita bread, cold bean salad, tzatziki. And for dessert, lemon bars. Tart, but gooey and so, so good.
Been watching the Beckham documentary. Obviously going for the ‘Last Dance’ kind of vibes, however the difference for me is I was living in the UK while all of this was happening and so remember watching some of this stuff unfold.
Real shame that Bryan’s MacOS Today Widget for posting to Micro.blog isn’t supported anymore on the latest versions.
New microbrand Erebus has launched their first watch, the Origin. Still wondering if this is for me (likely not), but it’s nice to see a YouTuber make a leap from reviewing to creating something more into the world.
For me, I’m eyeing something a little more than the $300 mark in the Baltic Hermetique Tourer in blue, the Astor and Banks Fortitude Lite Navy Blue or the Nodus in ‘Frost’. There are plenty of great options around the $600 mark, that would work for an everyday alternative to my workhorse Vaer Field watch (which I love).
I’ve increasingly been noticing the varieties that exist in the world around me.
The variety that is available to us now in 2023 would be mind boggling to many 20 years ago. Yet with that level of choice, we are also confronted with the burden of selection. We have to wade through a mountain of options to find what best suits our own needs.
This is partially why I have been hunting over the last 10 years for sensible defaults1. It is something that I have been very passionate about mainly because it’s one less thing to think about. In the aggregate, when you don’t have to make the same decision again and again means that you are able to spend more time on other things. Life’s low hanging fruit.
Life can be like a massive shopping carts. We fill it with experiences, products, people, memories, food, drink, laughter and sorrow. These items in our carts sometimes are easy to find and sometimes are hidden deep underneath a bunch of other crap we either didn’t need in the first place or that we used and have no need for. And this works across three dimensions. Physical, mind and digital. Managing this cart can either make our lives easier or more difficult. To make things easier we look for sensible defaults. These are knowing traits that address our current, immediate needs. Finding our sensible defaults means that we are not overwhelmed or distracted. Our cart is lighter.
At the start of our journey, our tastes are immature. We’ve not really had the time to sample things to see what we like and what we definitely don’t like. There is a period of exploration that precedes settling on the thing that makes the most sense, most of the time, for the time. Life doesn’t need to be heavily spiced. Equally when it does not have enough spice, it becomes bland. Sensible defaults let you reach a sweet spot of balance.
A sensible default is a the steady state we reach after experimentation. As we grow older, we begin to settle into place. Our go to wine. Our favourite type of slipper. The optimal notebook. Sensible defaults allow us to spend less time feeling cheated by something that is not meant for us.
Not for everything through. I would exclude food from this list as it is definitely something that I am happy to have as massive a selection and variety as possible. Food being one of the pleasures of life. ↩︎
A reasonably tough start to the week on the kids side. Both going through their own issues. Both pretty difficult to resolve as a parent. Not because I don’t have resolutions, but because these might not really be possible to a 5YO and 9YO.
Great video explaining some of the wild ambitions by Japanese architects in the 60s to reclaim (in the land context) the Tokyo bay.The $41 Billion Plan for Tokyo.
Not sure where he saw this, but on the way to school Zane asked me if he could buy a VR headset. To which I was like, ‘Hell no. Boy, do you even know what a VR headset is?’ His response was surprisingly accurate, although he’s clearly not heard that the Apple VR doesn’t need controllers in your hand…still think it’s a stupid product category.
New iPhone, means new case. My Horween leather case from Nomad on my iPhone 11 lasted me nearly 4 years, but I wanted something a little different. I ended up going for the Sheath from Caudabe in amethyst.
📱 I’m on a four year upgrade cycle. The thing is this year might be a phone that will stay with me for the next years (plus). The hardware itself has gotten so good that it far exceeds your daily needs. The cameras have now also gotten crazy good that they to are looking like they could last another 5 years at least.
The best example to this is my 2018 iPad Pro, which still feels magical 5 years after I bought it. I have no intention of upgrading that machine and yet I use it every day.
🍂 It’s hoodie season. To celebrate got myself a brown/hazel coloured one for 2023. Maybe this becomes a yearly tradition.
Politics On the Edge by Rory Stewart. I stumbled on Rory several years ago and in him found a politician I could look up to. Maybe because he has some clear mannerisms with a really close friend of mine? Either way, he’s got a new book out and the cover is epic. Also seems to be coming under a different name in North America, How Not To be a Politician. The cover is also just not as good…

🍻 Usually come Friday I am totally smashed and feel like I need a beer. Today, even though it’s been a long hard week, there has been successes and failures but today I absolutely don’t have the craving at all.
Just me an Zane in the house this week. It’s amazing the chaos that is inflicted on a house with four people in it. Makes me wonder how my grandmother was dealing with 9-10 people in the house. Madness really.
The blistering sunshine begins to subside.
The days of sweltering heat slowly fade.
Your mornings are now greeted with a sharp pinch of coldness.
A tree here and there has brown leaves that are slowly starting to fall.
The park, just weeks ago lush in shades of green, is now slowly starting to add more movement as leaves begin to fall.
More colours are added to the tapestry.
Your wardrobe begins to shift and change a little. It’s slowly starting to be hoody season.
You begin to crave different types of food.
Most surprising of all are the sunflowers that have been quietly growing throughout the summer.
Once it’s time they signal the change that is coming by giving one last ray of bright yellow. See you all next year.

Over the last year I have really leaned into the Pentel Energel as my go to pen of choice. As was inevitable, I started looking around to see the best option for a machined pen for this refill. The 36 Click Pen by Autmog is that pen (when Brian makes it into a 0.5mm version), but getting something bespoke for this refill on such an elegant looking pen has now gone top of my list.
Procreate Dreams. Between Procreate ans Affinity they have totally transformed what is even possible on an iPad. Cannot wait to get my hands on this app. Maybe even a Moon Racket! short?
One of the things that I have recently taken to is sketching idyll whenever I have a free moment. It’s mindless, but I’ve found it to be relaxing. The output is these reasonably dense pages that make me happy and sometimes that’s all that matters.
The new Santiago Bernabéu stadium opened this weekend. What an incredible project that is truly a fitting theatre for the Queen of European football. My favourite used to be thx Allianz stadium, but this is not that far back.
It’s done, at least all the interior pages of the Moon Racket! collection is done. All that’s left is a new cover and all the peripheral images that I am working on. It’s also been real fun developing the look of these characters that have been dormant for 5 years.
🍟 My kingdom for a full proof way to make decent oven fries. I know I’ve been doing it wrong, but my fries keep failing. Hunting on YouTube, it seems there are a couple of options that I need to try:
The above should hopefully make the fries crispy, but also not oily. I need to crack this, because the kids know I am prone to messing this up regularly. The kids know!
I’m really loving how these chapter break pages came together for the Moon Racket! collection. I have been struggling with how to make these pages more visually interesting.
I tried using inverted images, but they just looked odd. Sometimes an idea just pops into your head and it just works.
Publishing is making public your own enthusiasm.
— Robert Gottlieb
I really love this (via Austin Kleon’s newsletter).
I have been working through some of these thoughts at the moment as I put together my next few books. It’s a small but growing collection.
The book arrived! Super fast printing and delivery. I’m not a big fan of the glossy cover. The printing quality inside is reasonable. I do want to review this against some of the other comics that I have as I don’t tend to review things with the same amount of scrutiny.
Ordered the copy today. The cover needs to be sorted but great to see 120 pages of Moon Racket! loveliness coming together.
Just came out of Banksyland in Toronto. 5/10. Tiny venue. Sparse collection. This statue was my favourite part of the entire show.

Crispy, fresh air with a little bite. Summer is very slowly coming to an end. September and May have always been my favourite seasons.
For a while now I have been going through my stash of stationary, using all the things that I have used over the years. With the exception of my ‘grail’ fountain pen (an Ivory stock Pro Gear), I’ve not really interested in buying new things unless they enhance my stationary life properly.
A couple of boxes of Musgrave’s Tennessee Red pencils was top priority and then I also added one additional item which was the Staedtler 900 25 pencil holder. It’s everything that I could want as a complement to those pencils. Using my Midori MD Paper A5 notebooks (the only notebook I am using for sketching) and I have my absolute mobile studio with me whenever.
What this has done is that it’s made it easy for me to lean into sketching Moon Racket! characters, which I am really enjoying.
I could spend hours looking at the Made In website. It’s been nearly a decade since we bought our cookware and they have been excellent for us, but this, this is a serious upgrade. First off will be a larger frying pan and then we’ll go from there.
We didn’t go out very often to eat at restaurants while on holiday - I can count 4 times on the entire trip. There certainly is some theatre in eating outside and something I want the kids to experience, but to be honest, they’re still pretty young to get it all. Rather I leaned evermore into cooking for everyone. it relaxes me and allows me to eat the food that I want to eat, while making others happy as well.
When cooking I need the following:
The minimum spices needed are:
You can buy all the above from a supermarket for less than the cost of a meal at a restaurant these days. The objective wasn’t to experiment very much with flavours as it was to produce food that was acceptable to everyone. There were some definite hits that I will be doing more often.
To stretch my cooking a little bit, I bought the Men with the Pot cook book. YouTube chefs are some of my favourites to watch and learn from, so I’m really glad to find out about this pair of Polish chefs living in Northern Ireland.
This year I am also writing a cook book with my mother, which focuses on the Lebanese cuisine I grew up with. It’s not a massive culinary flex but I know what the gold standard is and keep trying to dial it all in to get those flavours I am very much aware of. I wish I could set her up so she can film everything she does so well, and maybe that’s a project for the future.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the ability to lean into several of my hobbies. I bought Jame Hoffman’s book How to make the best coffee at home, which is essential reading for anyone making coffee at home. Very well written, the photos throughout remind me of something I usually get when reading The Monocle. It does a great job of educating you and making you get excited about coffee. The only part I am not keen on, is the cover. Great buy and one that I hope to use regularly as I expand my knowledge of this hobby.
I was able to buy a non brand tamper (that I hope works) for my CoffeeJack. Finally got my CoffeeJack this year, tried a couple of times to make coffee without the tamper and lost the will to live and made a right mess of my kitchen. A tamper is an essential part of the kit of making coffee with that contraption. The stand is also pretty important, but will wait until they have their shit together over there before I send them any more money. Also I want to be sure that I like making and drinking coffee this way.
Finally, I got a Timemore Basic Pro scale. This is another major upgrade in my coffee accessories. The gooseneck kettle was pretty key for me and this is another one that just makes life a lot easier. The built in timer is a game changer for me. Yes I know I have a smartphone and a clock on the wall, but honestly this is that much more convenient.
The final piece of the puzzle for me is a machine grinder, I have my eye on the Varia VS3. This appears to be one of the better small amount grinders out there. Might even go for the white version.
Once I have this, then it’s just paraphernalia (a cupping spoon here, a funky mug or two there). Still need to see if I want to invest in an espresso machine, but that can wait for a while I think.
This is one of the best takes on Twitter’s Rebrand to X. It’s so fundamentally stupid, stupid,stupid.
Absolutely loving the subscription to The Athletic. Great coverage. Great reading experience. The app has an awesome feature of turning the photos of articles that are read to black and white. You can focus on the sports and teams you are interested in. If you’re into sports, this is a great present to yourself.
Work on Moon Racket! continues. The first draft of all the text is now in. I should have the majority of the book completed by the end of the week save the cover (and possibly some additional sketches and graphic elements I want to add throughout the book).
♟️ Played chess with Zane yesterday and he legit beat me - up until now it’s been a question of growing his confidence and letting him win. Not yesterday, boy had me on the ropes. Great feeling for sure.
Amazingly full day.
What summer is all about :).
Someone from Florida has to explain this to me. What’s the deal with the scales as you enter and leave a supermarket?
📚 Finished reading: Deep Work by Cal Newport.
Most of which I already knew from his podcast, but totally needed this reminder of all the things that I have been doing wrong this last year of transition to Canada.
I remember reading about Snapdrop on Dense Discovery as a means of sharing files across platforms but couldn’t remember the name.
I sat down in front of iPad this morning to write the Moon Racket! introduction. I was looking at around 300words. In that first instance I thought I was going to struggle to write much more than that. Then my brain started firing up and 1000 words later I could see where all of this was heading. Pretty confident that I will get most of the book done during this stay, maybe even get the start of the cover done?
I’m currently reading ‘Deep Work’ and while I have heard all of this before on Cal Newports podcast, it’s amazing how much I’ve fallen off these very basic elements in my daily working life. The biggest one is the shutdown routine. My journalling habit is non existent at the moment (save this website).
My deep work sessions have also taken a beating. My inbox is a mess. My Calendar is always stacked. I let all of this happen as I focused on very important goals but they came at a huge cost.
I’ve always known what I have to do (and why), I just reverted back to my default which I know better.
I am always amazed by the shapes and colours of the clouds here in Florida. They really are unlike anything I have seen in Europe or Canada. They’re defined, fluffy and distinct across an azure blue sky as the backdrop. I love it. It always stands out to me when we visit and I feel that people living here don’t appreciate this aspect of their environment as much - or maybe they’ve just grown accustomed to it all.
‘Where is home?’
I hate that question.
It sometimes comes as a comments. It’s sometimes a question. It’s sometimes a bit of both. Either way it’s annoying to me, because I cannot claim to have one home. Home is not where I was raised 30 years ago, or where my parents were raised.
I have had many homes. Home is where I am at in that moment. It was Athens. It was Nottingham. It was London. It was Dubai. Until last year it was Copenhagen. It is now Toronto.
Home is where I feel safe to raise my children and make a life for myself.
I lost my uncle Moueen yesterday. My mother broke the news to me and I didn’t understand it at first. It came as a total surprise. I knew he was struggling with certain health issues, but clearly didn’t realise the extent. Didn’t even cross my mind that this was even on the cards for him. As I understand it, he was sure he’d be out of hospital. Typically when I write these eulogies about my family they are a method of working through the pain. I am usually crying. I am almost always a little distraught.
This time however I am completely numb.
Lebanon in the 1980s, the country was at war. It didn’t really matter to my parents. Summers meant we were in Lebanon visiting family. To this day the how remain unknown, but it felt that a new car would be adopted into the wider family every single year.
And so it came to be, that sometime in the late 1980s my father would borrow his uncle Moueen’s gold Pontiac (or some extra long American car) for the summer. This car was entirely out of place in the tiny little town of Saida. It was not designed for roads designed within an old town with its own idiosyncrasies. It stood out, and was so awkward to manoeuvre anywhere. People would get out of their way offering guidance, like Navy Catapult Officers guiding a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier. For the entire summer, my dad relished in the fact that everywhere he went he was referred to as ‘Hakeem’ (hakeem being the Arabic word for doctor.) as he went about his business. For that summer, in the moments he was driving that car and having to interact with people, my dad felt like he was the ‘Hakeem of Saida’.
But of course he wasn’t, he was pretending.
That was his Uncle Moueen’s title. It was a title he built over years with dedication, kindness, compassion, morality and exceptional humanity. Much of this service to the wellbeing and health of helpless children, happened before I was born or when I was a child. My father however was there and he saw what was going on. Each act elevating my dad’s reverence to his uncle further and further.
My father’s relationship with his uncle (like his relationship with any of his uncles) was not traditional. In Moueen, he had the older brother he never had. With that relationship came a profound admiration and reverence, which probably explained his obsession with one of his kids becoming a doctor. For my father, there really was nothing greater that could be achieved than becoming a doctor. A concept that was developed and moulded around one of his real life heros.
My very first recollection of my uncle was on one of his many trips to our house in Athens. My mother had prepared a massive spread (as she would do regularly) in honour of my uncle’s visit. At the end of the meal, I remember asking him how the heart worked.
My mother rolled her eyes. My dad dismissed my request outright. My uncle would proceed to try and educate my 9 year old mind about the inner workings of the heart. I remember nothing of what he said, but sitting on his lap while he talked, made me feel safe.
He occupied a space in my heart that is difficult to express fully, but I will try. Over the years I would meet up with him both in the UK and Lebanon. During the days we would spend together I would get to know him a little better. I would observe his words, which were meticulously chosen. His points were poignantly made. His demeanour, calm and collected. He carried a childlike enthusiasm for all things.
His eyes would widen. His thick bushy eyebrows would become animated. This was always on display when he would show me (or tell me) about his latest woodworking project. While medicine was his vocation, he true love was carpentry. He took exceptional pride in the craft and had dreamed of following in his own father’s footsteps. His father was not supportive of that path for his youngest son. The dedication to woodworking would have to wait until his retirement years.
We would talk about politics and authors. My favourite recommendation of his was Leo the African by Amin Maalouf. To this day, it remains one of my favourite books.
He would talk about history as though he lived through this period himself. Assured of his facts and the reasons behind each element of a story. For me, these conversations were unique in that I would rarely have this breadth with someone else.
I do hold some regret because it was too long since I had reached out to him. I remember the last conversation was a rambling one as I explained my reasons for leaving Denmark and what I hoped to achieve in Canada.
Moving countries and being caught up in everything that goes into settling into a new country. The reality being that I took his presence for granted. Sadly we don’t live forever.
I know that my uncle Moueen was a man that lived with integrity and that his life is to be celebrated. True role models are not common in our world. People in your life that you can look up to and can admire for what they brought to the world. We should all be lucky to have even a fraction of the impact this man, born the youngest of his siblings, would have on the world.
I don’t want to feel sad, because my uncle lived a full life and was able to leave this place better than how he had found it. He made an impact on countless lives. He is a lesson that few will be able to replicate.
Ok, I lied the last sentences have made me cry.

Over the last few days I have got to hang out with many more parents around the parks near the house. Each of us trying to do the best for our kids. Get them out of the house, playing and enjoying their summers. Shared war stories and challenges. Thoughts on life. Thoughts on raising kids during a pandemic.
Started the holiday prep. Suitcases are out and the clothes we’re going to be taking are starting to get added. I have a clear idea of the stuff that I will be taking with me as well, but it’s going to be a reading, swimming, writing and relaxing kind of holiday.
I’ve been reading BlogTO for a couple of months now in an attempt to get a high level feel of what’s happening in Toronto. The reporting is generic and base, however it does offer a slice of Toronto, warts and all. This week however I’ve been shocked by the total breakdown in civil behaviour amongst people in Toronto, some as little as 5 minutes from my house. Good natured Canadians exist. They’re just not very common in the cities it seems.
Really great video about Rob Liefeld. This takes me back to my early teens instantly as I was there from Spawn #7 onwards. I would go back and hunt all of Image’s #1 and they still remain dear to my heart. Good to see that they reconciled at the end.
♟️Been playing chess a lot on my mobile. I definitely get it now. Damn is my endgame shocking. So, so bad.
Been practicing my chess using the wonderful Chessmate. It’s like the iA Writer of chess games.
Feels really great getting back into writing about the built environment. I am exercising a completely different muscle here, considering it’s less education and more opinion. By default it will probably be more angry in tone but it’s more from a position of frustration, from someone who knows we can do better if we applied ourselves and changed our attitudes to what we are entitled to, what we desire and what we need.

The Boy and the Heron, was released on Friday in Japan and is Miyazaki coming out of retirement. Miyazaki is definitely following in the footsteps of another Japanese great, Osamu Tezuka, whose last words were:
I’m begging you, let me work!
Absolutely fascinating video about the cost of lithium mining in both Chile and Bolivia. The last scene with the graveyard of trains really hit home, how places with extreme wealth in natural resources, are always the subject of colonialism and exploitation, leaving little back to help improve the local population. Why is it that some places protect these resources for their people and other places, have never been capable of doing this. Also hadn’t heard of direct lithium extraction, so will be diving into that a little bit.
When we arrived from Florida, the temperature was starting to turn. Ryan was adamant that he wanted his bike. We tried to reason with him. We tried negotiating. We tried ignoring the subject. In the end the 5 year old won and we got him a small bike, thinking he might not even get to ride it in the winter and he would have outgrown it by the summer - I even kept the box in case we needed to return it.
Turns out it is by far Ryans most prized possession that he did use it a ton in the winter (which was mild I understand) and hasn’t outgrown it completely. Sometimes you have to listen to the five year old.
Huh. HST (Tax) is now applicable on personal purchases made from private buyers on eBay. What a load of crock. Tax has already been paid on this good. I’m all for paying my share, but this seems wrong.
Been thinking really hard about my next phone. I’ve been on the iPhone exclusively since the iPhone 4. The hardware design is now pretty established and somewhat stale - unsurprising since I’ve been using the same form factor for over a decade.
The Sony Xperia 1 V is decidedly a Sony product. It’s sleek. It has character. It has texture (something Apple cannot ever claim). I understand that the software is an improvement on standard Android fair, but will it be too jarring? Will the software have no polish? Is everything else that Sony has to offer enough?
Don’t need to make a decision yet, at least for another few months until the iPhone 15 Pro comes out.
It’s photos like this that make me lament not having a better camera on me. I am ‘due’ an upgrade this year as I’m on an iPhone 11.
But weirdly I don’t give a shit about the app ecosystem anymore. What I actually care about is whether I can get the best camera. Is that an iPhone Pro or is it a Sony something something…
Clearly it rained last night. The patio furniture is wet. Thankfully I had moved the cushions under the canopy last night. It’s pretty quiet. Except the occasional plane overhead breaking the silence. The air is crisp with a pinch of cold.
I downloaded Threads. It’s fine. When it gets ActivityPub it will be of some use to me. Right now it’s another silo from a tech company I don’t trust and doesn’t really care about me.
My resident beer guy recommended Beau’s Juiced AF, and he nailed it once again. Love a guy that knows and loves his trade. It can even happen in a small governmental run beer store filled with people mainly returning bottles and cans.
Over the last couple of days I have felt a little restless. Recently I’ve felt the need to put a little less pressure on myself, when it comes to my creative hobbies. I guess part of this is the realisation that all of these endeavours are a hobby. They all contribute towards a body of work that ultimately helps me get through life; yet they are hobbies nonetheless.
Then I realised how many book projects I have on the go, which likely contributes to that restless feeling. Turns out I have 8 projects in different stages of development. The thing is, a considerable amount of effort goes into the production of any of these book projects. Beyond the writing, illustrating or compiling, putting it all out there takes effort.
With all of these different book projects that I am working on, I thought it would be good to create a new imprint called KAA Books. I did consider KAA Press or even KAA POW, but books just does what it says on the tin. Still on the fence about whether I always keep the books word in there, or just keep the KAA word mark and call it a day.

What’s interesting to me is that these are all different forms of work. Comic strips. Children’s book. Cook book. Illustrated novel. I also have a design book (even have the name ready), and a short story collection (have the first 3 written and published).
In writing this, I imagine part of the restlessness has to be the fact that there are all of these projects that I want to get over the line in some way.
I have had to switch to Affinity Publisher, as this image heavy book was really taxing the Pages app, which is better with other kinds of nooks. This will be my next book. The biggest hurdle is the cover, however I now have a clear idea of what I want it to look like.
This is a children’s book idea I have had for a while. what I hadn’t realized was how much I had actually written across 2017. I’m glad I waited a little while as I will need to rework some of this and use the latest character designs which I am really happy with.
I started collecting this book earlier this year. It’s a cook book based on my mum’s recipes. The way I see it, we’re co-writing this. I get the receipt, test it out myself and edit according. This is probably a little way off, but I’ll have a ton of fun putting this together and will have something pretty unique and special at the end of it all. This also works really well into the video space, something I’ve not really delved into.
This is something I am writing whenever I get an idea. It’s an outlet that I have missed having, it’s been 10 years since I wrote season two. As I have been rereading the older strips, I’ve found that where I have felt most engaged is when I am commenting on the political landscape .It’s a definite change of course (considering I’ve written a children’s book), but I guess the one thing that is clear with these characters is how they have evolved both in their themes and their design.
Originally conceived as a graphic novel, I’ve now decided to work this as a short story. The main concept gave me incredible brain crack, however I think it works well in the 1500-2500 works/season. There will be at least 4-6 seasons. The final version might be a single book with illustrations but honestly that is years away.
The purple volume. Finally got a print version of this. Will be editing this throughout 2023 and then hopefully Mike can review next year, for publishing summer of 2024.
The yellow volume. Chapters 1-9 are written, need to stick the landing. This one is proving harder to write because it all has to come together as one volume.
The orange volume. This is the last full volume that I wrote on Stet. Volume 4 is a way off considering all these other projects that I have going.
Demons hate fresh air.
It’s been a miserable Sunday. Dreary. Rainy. We’ve been cooped up all day. Slight break in the weather I took the kids out to ride their bikes.
Started watching Silo yesterday. The mystery element gives me strong Lost vibes, with the production values of Foundation (which was…boring?).
Mclaren are now into the scooter business? For $2000…steep for my liking, but it does look pretty good.
The Family Crest. My favourite ‘new’ band. A ‘new’ band being anything I discovered and loved post 1999.
WTF Canada…I know it’s not your fault, but these forest fires are really, really bad. Can’t really go outside because the air quality is soo bad, we’re stuck inside….again. More importantly, are these fires a regular thing now or is the government going to step up their systems to tackle them earlier?
Long weekend start now! It’s been a slog these last few weeks, but I finally feel like I am actually getting my head slightly above water. Three days will fly by, but I am hopefully that I’ll be able to fill them with some good things. Summer is officially here. Kids are off school and the grind can calm down a little.
NEVS Emily GT. Great overview of what SAAB could have been. Great use of technology that I used for my electric cargo bike when in Denmark.
🛝 As parks go, Regent Park in Toronto is extremely kid friendly. Can see I will be spending a decent amount of time here for sure.
Every weekend I like to try cooking something new. Throughout the week my attention and energy levels are typically drained elsewhere. For this week, I’m going to be making a lemon cake (pretty simple) and maybe a beef dish (it’s been a very vegan/vegetarian week).
We always said we would wait until there was a shitty rainy day before we take the kids to the Science Center. Today is the day.
I always have a serious calm when I am pulling something together. My brain stops whirring around and settles in on the task at hand. I am actually working in Affinity Publisher rather than Pages for this project (had to switch) because the image heavy book I am working on is far easier to manage - maybe it’s because I haven’t worked out exactly how images work properly in the app.
Somehow we’re at the end of June. Slowly but surely I will have been in Canada for an entire year. It has been an incredible journey. Have I settled into life here? There are certain things that I absolutely love. There are some things that certainly make my eyebrows rise in surprise. No place on Earth is whole. Some places are better suited for you than others. I will say that I feel that I do ‘get’ this place. I understand where a lot of Canadians are coming from.
I do tend to love the colourful characters around the place (not to keen on the crazies that are found downtown…the social fabric should be able to care for these people better, but that is a whole other topic).
Every once in a while, I am surprised. Walking home, on a rainy afternoon, and a dude is walking his dog in an outfit that’s a cross between something from the Village People and a mankini. The confidence to do that is off the charts. Same walk, another dude without a shirt on, is running while hiding from the cars….
The puppy industry in Canada is truly far reaching. Today I was reminded when I saw a dude carry two puppies and proceeded to give them a photoshoot around some water fountains. Selling the lifestyle. If it wasn’t big business I doubt so many people would be in on this.
The phone I had before this was an iPhone 6S. It had a button. It also had an aquamarine blue soft rubber case from Puro (an Italian outfit at the time). My new case feels like that case and somehow my muscle memory is mixing things as I aim for a home button. The brain can be easily tricked.
After +4 years, I was forced to get a replacement cover for my phone. Feels strange considering I hold this object, every, single day. Opted for the closest thing to an official Apple case, without it being an official Apple case (with the stupid Apple tax).
The hardest thing for me as a parent is trying to teach a kid when then absolutely, positively have no intention of learning a god damn thing. In this case…shoelace. Please give me strength. And alcohol.
Spent the afternoon with Ryan pottering around the garage (fixing bikes, recycling for the week, general clean-up), and was transported to my own childhood following my dad as he did his handyman impression (to varying degrees of success). Need to write about one of my favourite tools which has become my pocket knife. Use this thing all the time and really wonder how I managed previously without one.
This Jamie Tartt montage of his character arc is amazing. The music selection is masterful as well. Ted Lasso has been a great series and can’t wait to rewatch this series again.
One of the simple pleasures that I was hoping to have when we moved to Toronto was the ability to have some external space. Even though the last few days have had forest fire smoke everywhere, tonight is much better.
There is a slight calm in the air along with a temperature that needs a hoodie and is pretty much perfect.
I am sitting outside on some new garden furniture I have had my eye on for a while now. Finally I get to sit outside, have a beer and chill. I have music playing softly, from a tiny little Mi speaker I bought in Dubai 5 years ago and that is surprisingly great.
In the background I can hear the ambient hum of Toronto streetcars doing their thing. Every once in a while I hear a dickhead in their car revving their engine.
Summer has arrived.
Finished reading: The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante 📚
Vision Pro. Super interesting technologies and ideas. Totally unmoved at even considering it or anything like it. For me, it’s akin to the Apple Watch, it solves a problem I don’t have, nor want to have.
It’s been a seriously long time since I was super excited to pick up a pencil and sketch. They are Corgan doodles but they have been seriously fun. Exploring and slowly uncovering something that has existed inside me for so long. Next stop will be to write some scripts - which I feel I need to make a equal evolution.
It feels great stepping away from the internet for a while. I’ve been devouring a book and sketching like crazy. It’s taken a year for my mind to settle…that’s what happens when you change countries for the umpteenth time I guess, but great to have my attention back.
This latest video on Sony phones by MKBHD is really on point. I’ve always been a big fan of Sony (and their Ericsson line of phone) and would happily get a dedicated camera phone (with no SIM card) if it really was $700.
I bought a KVM switch that looked great but effectively didn’t work properly. I replaced it with another switch that doesn’t have the same elegance in industrial design but does exactly what its supposed to. Reminded of the Steve Jobs quote:
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
In the 4½ years since I got my iPad Pro, I have never felt it struggle with anything that I have thrown at it…until today. Pulling together an image heavy book (currently clocking in at 88 pages and 120MB) is pushing it.
I’ve been putting together my next book, a collection of everything related to my comic strip Moon Racket! and I am absolutely shocked by the amount of material that I have created over the years (even though I’ve not touched these characters in years). Really looking forward to what the final package looks like. Will be working on the cover next and it should go to print pretty soon - apart from a new introduction and some commentary, there is little by way of editing, it’s all there.
🇱🇧 Lebanon
🇬🇷 Greece
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
🇩🇰 Denmark
🇶🇦 Qatar
🇹🇷 Turkey
🇯🇵 Japan
🇲🇾 Malaysia
🇮🇹 Italy
🇪🇸 Spain
🏴 Scotland
🏴 Wales
🇩🇪 Germany
🇨🇦 Canada
🇸🇾 Syria
🇴🇲 Oman
🇮🇨 Canary Islands
🇻🇦Vatican City
🇲🇹 Malta
🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina
🇨🇾 Cyprus
🇺🇸 United States:
🔌 Power cut in the house today….looks like it’s something we can look forward to till the end of the year….damn.
A few weeks back I decided to go ‘cheap’ and got an HDMI switcher and a couple of Amazon basic HDMI cables. The intention was to create a good enough solution for switching my screen between my new Mac and work laptop. Needless to say, it did not go well, and I ended up having to scrap the solution for what I knew was the superior (but pricer) option to begin with (a KVM USB-C switcher). Reminded of the old adage:
A poor man can afford only the very best.
I am really loving the 3D analysis videos of lap comparisons in an F1 race. They offer a view of racing we have not seen before. The latest one from Monaco putting Verstappen’s lap against Alonso’s is easily one of the best I’ve seen.
Some how this Baby Einstein shot for 8 years ago, on Dribbble has garnered 5300 views. Think I’ll release the full image and also put it up for sale as a print - I already have one in the kids room.
⚡️ It’s not every day that you get one of these - but I think I have the next phase of Stet in a hazy vision in front of me. Just need to put a little more polish to the idea.
I have to say that the news out of Spain and La Liga around the Vini Jr racism incident, is just so disheartening. The year is 2023, not 1923. The world has got the internet, electrical cars, iPhones and other truly incredible innovations that are meant to move humanity forward. And yet. And yet, here we are that a black man, one of the most exciting players in the game, is treated with absolute human disrespect. It’s just not good enough. When this happens, the match has to stop and the fans/team has to be properly punished. It’s just simply not acceptable in this day and age to be acting with such ignorance. Total ignorance when there is simply no excuse.
Great day out in the countryside for Stephanie and Tim’s wedding. First long drive in Canada (certainly not going to be the last). Also modern mapping technology makes the whole journey a hell of a lot less stressful. Make a wrong turn, no worries, rerouting and you’re good to go.
Some how I totally missed that this Toronto specific site exists - even though I was told about this site several times. Sometimes you just need sometime to settle in.
Life can be like a massive shopping carts. We fill it with experiences, products, people, memories, food, drink, laughter and sorrow. These items in our carts sometimes are easy to find and sometimes are hidden deep underneath a bunch of other crap we either didn’t need in the first place or that we used and have no need for. And this works across three dimensions. Physical, mind and digital. Managing this cart can either make our lives easier or more difficult. To make things easier we look for sensible defaults. These are knowing traits that address our current, immediate needs. Finding our sensible defaults means that we are not overwhelmed or distracted. Our cart is lighter.
At the start of our journey, our tastes are immature. We’ve not really had the time to sample things to see what we like and what we definitely don’t like. There is a period of exploration that precedes settling on the thing that makes the most sense, most of the time, for the time. Life doesn’t need to be heavily spiced. Equally when it does not have enough spice, it becomes bland. Sensible defaults let you reach a sweet spot of balance.
A sensible default is a the steady state we reach after experimentation. As we grow older, we begin to settle into place. Our go to wine. Our favourite type of slipper. The optimal notebook. Sensible defaults allow us to spend less time feeling cheated by something that is not meant for us.
🚗 Long weekend begins soon…however just got our rental for the weekend. Really looking forward to exploring Canada a little more beyond the GTA.
Looking forward to Micro Camp 2023. I had a lot of fun contributing to the event last year and really looking forward to what all the speakers have lined up.
I play the NY Times Mini Crossword Puzzle every day. Unlike Wordle which can frustrate me this 2min interaction is a joy.
🏕️ First time I drop the kids off for their Cubs Scouts and Beaver…what do you call these, meets? Have 45min to kill, so grab a beer at the local pub. You know what, I can get used to this. Next time will bring my notebook.
💪 Alright, remember how I said having no breakfast was surprisingly easy? A week in and it is getting tougher. I guess as the body has started to eat into all the various reserves, it’s starting to get a little harder every day. Having said all of that, I am still holding strong.
The animals around me always remind me that I’m not in Europe or the Middle East any more. The squirrels and raccoons, but mostly the birds. Amazing plumage here in North America.
I’ve always, always, look at me, always, had a dislike of the word ‘blog’. It’s like one extra letter in the word bog. It’s a made up word that doesn’t sound very nice. I appreciate I might be on an island with this, and that’s ok.
Rather, I like to think of this site as a catalogue of moments in my life. The more you read all the different definitions the word moment describes, the more apt it feels:
An appropriate time for doing something; an opportunity. A very brief period of time. Importance.
I share these moments online.
I share them with the world.
Mostly they go unheeded.
Every once in a while there is some traction.
But mostly they go unnoticed.
And that’s ok.
Thoughts, ideas and interests that captured my imagination.
Even for a few seconds.
A few minutes.
A few moments.
Why isn’t Bard available in Canada or the EU? I thought I had messed up a setting in my Google account. Turns out no. This is a thing.
JPL’s New Snake Robot is such an innovative approach to terrain exploration. Just couldn’t help smiling watching this video.
It is shocking to me how quickly your body can get used to less food. For years breakfast has been an absolute necessity…but actually it’s not been at all, it’s been a luxury. I thought I would get headaches and not be able to function properly. Not so much. Around 1pm I start to feel the hunger and then I’m good all the way till dinner time. The knock-on is that I don’t feel hungry for the rest of the day either, mainly because my body understands that it’s not going to be getting anything until it’s time.
I remember when I was a Cub Scout, I loved it. Loved collecting the badges, I loved the manual, the activities. I really think Zane is going to love it. Next level.
Zane’s having a tough time at school. A few months ago we decided that he was becoming obsessed with his Switch, to the point that he wasn’t talk about anything else. The unintended consequence being that he got his old interest in animals and nature, but all his existing friends don’t have that interest themselves. And so he feels alone with his interest that nobody else is interested in.
My overall health has stagnated, so I’m trying something a little different with my diet.
No snacking, no sweets, no seconds remains a thing - as always it is in the evenings that I sometimes falter. My mornings however will have no breakfast, just water and a cup (or two) of coffee. First meal of the day is lunch. Break-fast?
Also, I’m getting onto the exercise bike for 10-15min in the morning for some cardio, followed by a 30min walk to work (and back again in the evening).
☕️ I hate running out of coffee. My issue is that I now have access to good quality stuff from Latin America, only a few clicks away. I just need to be organised enough to order in advance. Otherwise I am stuck with ok-ish stuff from the supermarket (for nearly the same price).
⚽️ A great Ted Lasso episode. This year has been a little miss more than hit, but hopefully going to end strong.
Have fallen out of so many habits at the moment. Some of them like journaling, reading and gratitude writing are things that really help my mental fortitude. The issue has been primarily about settling my mind. 10 months into our Canadian adventure I can say things are slowly settling down a little.
Witnessed the most, un-Canadian thing today. On the intersection in front of our house a man in his early 20s was going absolutely ape-shit. It wasn’t clear to me what the issue was, but I can only imagine he was hit by a car, which drove away. It ruined his bike and the man’s day unravelled from there. Beyond the effing and blinding, he would proceed to pick up his bike and start attacking all the oncoming traffic in a fit of pure rage. I totally felt sorry for him until he started attacking every car that passed by.
Drivers and cars that clearly had nothing to do with his incident, but at that stage, he didn’t care.
His initial rage may have been justified.
He’s subsequent reactions were not.
The whole incident was unfortunate and overall disheartening.
Aqueux are high quality dynamic wallpapers based on a classic Mac images. Currently loving Ventura which I am using across my devices.
There’s now going to be a Gran Turismo Movie? First the Mario movie, then Tetris, now this. What next? Shinobi?
Last week I noticed my relatively new Apple keyboard had a sticky ‘0’ button. I yanked it out like an animal and damaged it. I think proceeded to watch some videos to see what was going on and ordered a replacement. Fast forward a week and the replacement didn’t work properly….and then cmd+c stopped working. So I’ve gone and ordered myself a Satechi Slim X2 keyboard, that not only is backlit, comes in space grey, but is also cheaper than the current Apple offering - which I really don’t like.
☕ Didn’t know that there was a Specialty Coffee Expo (in hindsight, of course there is). Good excuse to visit Chicago for the first time.
🥘 After several years now of cooking regularly, I have only now begun mixing things up a little and combining techniques and flavours to create something I know that I will enjoy. Nothing crazy complicated, but packed full of flavour.
I’m pretty sure I did TCAF wrong. Even though a massive comic fan for years, while I have been out of the loop for a while now, I want to say that I know a fair few indie creators…except honestly I was pretty lost in this convention. I would not be able to tell if the person behind the booth was helping the creator or was the creator themselves.
We ended up getting a few books that Zane liked and a poster for me. I would have really loved to spend a little more time walking the floor, but it wasn’t really for the kids (even though the kids section was pretty fun, Ryan was totally bored).
TCAF 2023. Soo packed. Can’t say it was an elegant experience (not that I was expecting one), but hoped for a little bit more…space. Having said that the Toronto Reference Library is a good venue, just too many people.
Somehow I have ended up putting my dropbox folder of notes on the side and concentrating my efforts on putting everything into the Notes.app. I’m following the PARA method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive). The reason for Notes is the fact that I can put photos and pdfs straight into the note itself. Also adding todos and tables is infinitely easier and less cumbersome than plain text. The main disadvantage is that it doesn’t seem to be as mobile as I would like, but if I am actually using the notes and getting all my threads organized, it’s a small price to pay.
I have to hand it to the DayOne development team. Once you get all your entries into the app, it is super snappy to get through everything. Speed and snappiness in a piece of software is an incredible feature to have, especially one that is dealing with a large database of information.
Currently going through my 2685 entries and trying to get them printed out into yearly books.
I hope that my site lasts for a while, but then again it might not. Better to try and capture these thoughts and life in one nice place that I can look back on in the future. Truly wish I had this 20 years ago when I started experimenting on the web.
Stop Using Custom Web Fonts. Needless to say I don’t agree with Brian at all on this point. There are many reasons to use a custom web font and it has nothing to do with ‘brand’.
Really looking forward to my first TCAF this weekend.
On my way to work I occasionally walk past a young woman with a Tim’s cup of coffee. It’s always on the same strip of road at around the same time. Today I saw her baby bump for the first time and wanted to say, ‘Hey, congratulations’, but stopped shy of being the weirdo in the big city.
I get out of the house and hear a bird. Looked everywhere but couldn’t see where it was coming from. Then I look waaay up.

Tucker Carlson Is Dismissed From Fox News. See now that is funny. Fox getting taken down by a voting machine company. Go for blood guys.
Never has there been a better example of unlocking than today. Rain. Hail. Sunshine. All in one day. All this means is that spring is around the corner.
Well that is mega annoying. I totally messed up my website design by pressing the wrong button. I’ve been able to salvage some of the code (but damn, should have made a backup of all the html). Teaches me.
Went to arguably one of the worst stores in Canada, The Beer Store. The logo is awful. It’s a government run entity. It stinks of stale beer. There are usually 5-10 people loitering around there (not really buying anything). Some people are returning bottles and getting cash for them. You don’t go there for the experience.
The only reason I go there (occasionally) is for the Esterella Damm that you can only buy in this store. Except this time was different. I got to the front and asked for my Estrella, to my horror, they don’t stock it in this branch. Dejected, I started to think about what I could get instead.
I said, ‘What about a strong IPA?’ The guy responded, ‘Now you’re talking my language.’
And thus began a little education of Canadian IPAs from someone who loved beer and was super knowledgeable about the subject. Reminded in part of going and hanging around the comic book store with people that loved the medium. The whole interaction took maybe 2 minutes, but I gained a damn good beer and some additional knowledge. Finding those people that can actually help you is such a rarity these days.
That was fast. Moving all my articles and drawings into Pages for the new BEC Volume was super simple. Without having to think about all the formatting and what it will look like (because I did all that work for volume 1) means getting a working draft took less than a week. Now the hard graft of editing begins, but the raw materials are there to be polished.
Easily one of the things that I have missed the most in my wilderness away from the Mac is the use of the Web Inspector tool on Safari. Doing anything on the web without that thing is pure misery.
Cluny at the Distillery District. Wonderful ambiance. Food was decidedly meh. Post pandemic I am increasingly more critical about restaurant food.
Kapow! IPA by Rainhard Brewing Co. is my favourite Canadian beer. It would have been pretty freaky if they’d called it Kaapow (username I use when kaa is taken).
It’s that time of the year when Pages becomes my most used app. Love this thing app. Should be done with my author’s draft of volume 2 of the BEC pretty soon so that I can get it printed and the first editing process can begin.
For the last year I have been following Eric ten Hag (the manager at Manchester United), take over a team of underperforming footballers and make them into a cohesive team. One of the things that I am taking note of, is his stoic attitude to adversity and misfortune. Quietly. Calmly. Just. Get. On with it.
Jack Black sings Peaches. Easily one of the highlights of the Mario movie and I’m glad it also has it’s own video.
Sindre Sorhus is an Mac/iOS open source app fiend. So much goodness to try over there.
Seeing things in large (and not on iOS) is actually a little jarring. For all those wishing for the iPad only lifestyle…it certainly is achievable, but I would argue that it is also unnecessarily difficult and hampered.
🍣 Major cooking hack I just discovered. When frying salmon (if using a metal frying pan) is a little oiled parchment paper. All the heat. Non of the stick. Genius.
The last time I went to the cinema was probably seven years ago (I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in Dubai with my cousin). As I write that I realise that my life has in fact completely changed since I had kids. I remember hearing that life would change, but I just didn’t understand how much.
I think it was seriously fitting to finally see the Super Mario Bros Movie with the kids. This was the perfect introduction to what a cinema experience is about (the large screen, the popcorn) but then we stumbled on Imagine Cinemas in Toronto, which added a very cozy setup and some of the best (reclining) seats I have ever experienced. The staff was amazing, the bathrooms were clean and overall it was exactly what I wanted.
One of the things that has been a serious improvement on our lives in Denmark is the very fact that we are allowing ourselves to live a little more. Maybe the fact that our kids are a little older. Maybe the fact that there isn’t a global pandemic raging at the moment. I know it’s just the bloody cinema, something that I would typically do multiple times a month, but it’s a start to building out life and enjoying the simple things as well.
What’s this? I got a message in my inbox this week that my Coffeejack is making its way from China? Damn. I’ll believe it when I see it, but it will be good to draw a line under this project, turn off notifications and maybe enjoy a different method of coffee making.
Good day off. Didn’t achieve very much, but that’s ok sometimes. Made some calls. Cooked some food. Played with the kids. Tried out a new bakery. Watched a few videos. Did a little journalling. Some days you need a bit of general pottering.
This Ambessa Play is a DIY flashlight on Kickstarter. I like the concept behind this product (even though I totally am over Kickstarter), but the design is absolutely killer on this thing (by Pentagram no less).
Champions of Europe. You’ll never sing that.
Champions of Europe. You weren’t even born.
Champions of Europe. You won’t be alive.
How to use the Global MinoSharp Ceramic Water Sharpener. Not going to lie, these ‘vintage’ videos on how to sharpen my Global knife are amazing. My brother got me the knife back in Dubai, two lifetimes ago, first time I sharpen the knife (way, way overdue).
How was it made? Donatello’s marble carving technique. I love watching videos that showcase craftspeople doing things I could only dream about doing. Carving marble is certainly one of those skills.
That was unexpected. My 2021 watch purchase (and my everyday beater watch) is my Vaer field watch. I really love this little watch even though it has had some random time splits over the years.
At the time I bought this watch with two straps. A black rubber strap and a metal strap. Until this week I had never swapped the straps out because I didn’t have the $10 toolkit (sounds insane just writing that down).
With that omission sorted, what I’ve found is that actually I’m not a huge fan of metal straps. Keeps pinching the hairs on my arm. It’s much heavier than the rubber straps, and as my arm contracts and expands throughout the day, it also feels less comfortable.
The issue is that leather straps are water sensitive (and I really have no time for mothering a watch). This means that any future watches will have to get onto a rubber strap. No need for those metal straps I’ve had my eye on for the 2023 purchase.
🍔 Tried a burger place close to the house, The Burger’s Priest. Not a great burger. It always surprises me when a burger joint can’t get the bun right. It’s a fundamental element you have to nail. Otherwise don’t bother.
I finally went and did it. After nearly 4 years, a Mac is making its way back into my life. An M2 Mac Mini, with 16GB of RAM. My iPhone and iPad Pro have been excellent computing devices but there have been some truly cumbersome production moments that will get unlocked with a small silver box.
David Guetta & Bebe Rexha - I’m Good (Blue). Somehow this song broke through my Spotify fortress of progressive rock and 1990s Grunge. I’m instantly transported back 20 years. Much better lyrics than the original. Truly terrible music video - they basically did whatever they wanted as long as it had bikini clad women (strangely also takes me back 20 years). Also, Guetta, at 55, is shredded. Is he related to Springsteen?

Incredible wood carving on a scale I have never imagined possible, Hulk vs Wolverine. Definitely watch the making of video.
If I was 15 years old with $1,000 to burn this would have been an insta-purchase.
I don’t know how else to be.
On my latest trip Florida it dawned on me that I generally am genuinely happy in, when I’m in creation mode. Originally I had thought that this mode was mainly going to be spent around the creation of comics. Turns out that was pretty limited conceptually.
The last few years I have tried to combine all my interests together, in all things Stet. While that does remain my focus hobby, I have found that I do want to continue doing other things as well. Making things and putting them out into the world is something that makes me happy. None of these things are commercially viable. I’ll stick to my day job thank you very much.
I do these things very much for myself and if others find value in them as well then that’s an awesome bonus as well.
I do these things because I don’t know how else to be.
Totally inspired by Mendo’s post, finished off the KAA typeface and did a little comic about it.
As much as flying and travelling let’s you break routines we lost for the pandemic, there’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.
Importing SVG Files from Affinity Designer into iFontMaker. Yup will be using this at some point in the near future.
🏖️ One of the important aspects of a break is the mental reset. It’s the whole reason for the break in the first place. Let your brain wander a little. Let you have some time for things you previously you did not have the mental capacity for. As I’ve grown older I’ve realised how much more important these mental breaks are to let me truck on no matter what is thrown in my general direction.
Ah makes sense. So In was up against Barry Windsor Smith’s Monsters. That’s a tough one to go up against in your debut outing, against one of the masters of the medium. Having said that I haven’t been able to finish Monsters but I read In a few days after I brought it…
📚 Finished reading: In: the Graphic Novel by Will McPhail. What an incredible book. I’m surprised it hasn’t won any awards. Really surprised.
Writing my newsletter on a Sunday can be a pretty relaxed affair. Once I have the idea ready to go, I tend to go into production mode and the few points I want to make come out reasonably quickly. The biggest barrier from stopping me from doing it weekly is that I don’t want to add stress to my life. I like taking it easy with this, because it then becomes sustainable long term.
The part that I am loving is keeping in touch with what is going on in the built world. I get to learn something myself as much as those that have subscribed. This was one of the main reasons to bring the newsletter back even if in a slightly limited capacity.
📚 Finished reading: Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen
Following the last post, Calligraphr, let’s you create your font based on your handwriting with some easy to use tools. I prefer iFontmaker, however this allows you to use something like Procreate and it’s seemingly infinite brushes.
Wonderful post and idea. I would also add that you can do this yourself (I’m using ifontmaker on the iPad) but it takes time.
Watched Downton Abbey: A New Era. This movie is purely for the fans. Get to spend a little bit more time with them all and tying everyone’s story in a nice bow. Highlight, by far, was Mr.Mosley finally coming into his own.
The joys of going into an actual book store is the ability to browse and serendipitously stumble on something gold. In my case it was the works of Will McPhail. I was presented with two options, In and Love and Vermin. Both incredible works of art that I’m so glad to have discovered.
I checked the price on Amazon and obviously it’s like 40% lower…and yet I could have spent my entire life and I would never have stumbled on these books. A fair price of admission.
As a hobbyist author, the Pages app for iOS really is an amazing tool in your arsenal. Low stress because you can do just about anything you want to deliver and create something wonderful.
I now have three books on the move - the irony being I can’t seem to be able to read a book but can be writing three of them at the same time.
Watched the Banshees of Inisherin on the flight over to Florida - great movie although I guess I wanted more maybe from the ending?
Since the kids were born I’ve found it increasingly difficult to sit down and watch a movie the entire way through. In some ways it’s similar to reading a whole novel at the moment. I have several great books on the go and yet haven’t been able to finish any of them.
Maybe this little holiday will recharge some of those muscles and let me actually fill my brain with ideas and creativity that will help my own along the way.
43,000 posts. Across 25 years. That’s the equivalent of 1700 posts average per year or 140 posts per month. Or 4-5 posts per day. For over 2½ decades. Kottke is seriously dedicated to the cause.



New typeface by TipoType Axios Pro looks amazing. I’m a real fan of their extras and their italics which so much identity. I just need to pick the right project for this.
The Final Curtain Call on pirating the Oscars is a fascinating view on how to solve a problem by approaching it from a completely different angle.
An unfortunate effect of moving countries and the pandemic is that my kids have never experienced the movie theatre. I think The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a great place to right this wrong. It helps that I am super excited about this movie myself.
Haven’t heard a Daring Fireball show in a while. I wish all my podcasts had the same approach to notes and chapters. Really looks wonderful on the Feedbin companion app Airshow. Good job @gruber

Modern life is increasingly a struggle of managing multiple channels. Work channels. Home channels. Family channels. Online channels. Financial channels. Health channels.
Each channel jostles for attention. Sometimes some channels dominate your thoughts and other times they are left seemingly abandoned. The worst part is when your mind switches constantly between them all. Its true that it is not possible to always be ontop of each of these, all the time.
What I’ve found to be useful is reviewing these every month and seeing where everything is. Has it moved a little since last month? Can you remove some of these from the list. My preferred method of review is pen and paper, in what I refer to as a Life Book. I also have a Work Book.
reMarkable is a really interesting product, that probably costs x2 what I would be willing to pay. $1058 (Canadian) for the tablet, pencil/eraser and new folio keyboard. I paid less for my 2018 iPad Pro, which remains one of the greatest Apple purchases ever.
⛑️ I’ve recently noticed that I’m getting out of breathe walking up and down stairs. Clearly overweight, but the strange thing is that I have been walking more this winter than at any other time. 1hour to and from work. Time to get back into HIIT sessions.
Our Time. This Ford commercial announcing its back in F1 is amazingly well done.
☕️ Oh man I was not wrong. I’ve always felt that Costa Rica had something special when it comes to coffee beans. What an incredible cup of homemade coffee.
Medium’s me.dm Mastodon Server Opens Up. Same price as Micro.blog. I think I would pay $20-30/year for Mastodon. I get some value out of it but nowhere near the same value I get from Micro.blog.

Issue 003 of my newsletter Stet, is now out. This issue looks at the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum.
The thing about stationary is that it doesn’t generally go bad. You might not use it for a year or two or three, but when you finally get around to it, it can absolutely delight. Like this Tennessee Red Cedar pencil. Highly recommended.
Feedbin 10th Anniversary Tee. So totally there. Need a Micro.blog one as well.
Sometimes starting in the digital space is just not the right move. Back to paper and pencil and my little project for the week has taken a new lease on life.
🚇 Public transport in Toronto is interesting. If I choose to walk from my house, I get to work in 25-30min. If I take public transportation it takes me 20-25min.
Yesterday was tough work walking home. Times it perfectly to be hit by the storm. Wasn’t particularly cold, but the wind. The bloody wind. Good news. Tomorrow unlocking begins.
✏️ Drawing with the kids today. Also have a fun drawing side project that I can’t wait to get going.
By far one of the most awesome displays at the match was the black and white flags from the Newcastle United fans.
☕️ Quiet Sunday morning to reflect on the week that passed and maybe start to mentally prepare for the one coming ahead.
Beware of poisonous internet worms. The Scott Adams (Dilbert comic creator) controversy is at best, disappointing. It’s incredible how some fringe crap can get a poisonous worm in your head that grows and ultimately makes you spew some racist, segregationist crap on the internet. It’s 2023, not 1823.
Speaking of Mo Willems, his site, Pigeon Presents, is actually a celebration of his work. More authors and artists could really learn something from this presentation.
Watching Eric Ten Hag take on a struggling team and mould them into winners has been a real inspiration of team management. Any team leader should take note as there a lessons to be learnt. From confidence, to bad characters, to changing your mind, to having a plan.
Finished reading: Peanut Jones And The Illustrated City by Rob Biddulph 📚
So decided to take another stab at writing all my tasks down and using it as a bullet journal. It’s worked wonders for me in the past. This will be hyper focused on using it only for life tasks.
Great article over at Our Built Environment newsletter which looks at the magic that has seemingly become less common within the built environment. I would say that there still are many contemporary examples. You just have to know where to look. Maybe something for the next issue of Stet.
The new iOS app for Micro.blog (currently in beta), finally addresses the poor and clunky interface needed to edit posts.
Go to posts > tap the post > start editing directly > press Update.
Reason enough to upgrade to the beta.

Issue 002 of my newsletter Stet, is now out.

It’s been a while since I worked on some artwork. A little rusty but nice to finally have this outlet again.
EVERY Mac McClung Dunk in the 2023 NBA Dunk Contest. Been a while since I was super impressed with a dunk competition.
🖋️ I spoke to soo. In the end I won’t be getting an Ivory Sailor Pro Gear. They seemingly don’t exist any more, which is a huge disappointment. The good news is that it seems it might come back in stock sometime in the summer.
A Short History of My Last Six Years. Can’t wait for this book. Apple Books it is.
I love comeback stories. A sportsball team rebuilding and improving an existing crop of players. Since the summer I started watching the rebuilding story of the Manchester United team. I honestly thought that it would be something I would follow for a month and then it would fizzle away. Maybe because it was a World Cup year but the story has kept building.
The inspirational part for me is the story of a manager, taking a group of players that had raw talent and making them achieve far more collectively than they could achieve individually. Watching the story unfold every week has been pretty addictive as well, as you get your fix on a regular basis.
How fucking good is the Tetris movie trailer? So, sooo fucking good. Music is also on point.
Man that was rough. Went to the dentist. Chipped tooth from last year. Needed to get work done to get a crown. 2 hours in the chair but we done.
Good weekend. Got some life stuff done. Got family stuff done. Got some cooking done for the week. Not a very creative weekend but hopefully that will start becoming a thing now that the mind is getting more settled.
Looking to buy some airplane tickets. Maybe it’s a North American thing, but the fees and charges attached to 4 tickets is borderline insane.

Visiting a new city is always a fun thing. Montreal has been on my list of places to go since I was 18. Finally made it there. Overall it feels like a better put together city than Toronto. Smaller for sure but reasonably sized as well.
It’s so, so sad what has happened in Turkey. Humanity is not doing great at the moment. Between a pandemic, a madman’s war, a climate disaster and now an earthquake on a biblical scale.
Never heard of Legible.com, but they are going to be publishing Tim Urban’s new book - as a digital only book.
Such little dudes. Taking the boys to school can be a real highlight of my day when it’s not a rush job.
Really looking forward to Tim Urban’s book, What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies.

If you’ve missed my newsletter In Abeyance, sad news, I’ve decided to stop publishing my thoughts on the built environment in that format. For those wondering if I will do my 1500 word articles, the answer is of course, however they will follow their own schedule and will be released when they are good and ready. In the meantime you can read previous articles here, www.stet.li/articles.
The good news is that I’ve started another newsletter, Stet. Stet will share one single idea about the built environment and will be published every 2 weeks.
The very second article written for the old In Abeyance newsletter was centred around photovoltaics - it’s therefore fitting that Stet starts life on the same topic.
Read the first issue of Stet, Photovoltaic Carrots & Sticks. If you’re not already subscribed, now is a good time to remedy that monsterous error in your email diet.
What’s great about Status.lol is that it ‘gets’ it. It’s not a ‘blogging’ platform rather it’s a place to post live items, things that you don’t want your main website to get clogged up with randomness that is not going to really matter (or possibly incoherent) in the future.
It’s a place for the now. You want to share your thought so that it’s outside your head. The emojis add a great level delightfulness. The cherry on top is being able to add the latest status to your site with a small bit of JS that you can customise as well. Love it.

Really digging these Financial Times guides for Toronto. Once the weather starts heating up a little bit will be venturing out.
I am soo done with Kickstarter.
My biggest gripe isn’t the wait. It’s poor communication from the project makers. For years I have been getting one direction communication with the CoffeeJack creators. They inundate my inbox with emails about progress (or lack of it), delays, additional costs - all of which is fine.
What is not fine is the fact that I want confirmation of something, send an email months and months ago and no response. I follow up a few times. Crickets. They basically don’t respond to email.
I am now using three different blogging tools. Each uniquely suited for it intended use. Status.lol is for short, pithy updates. Micro.blog is for short and slightly long posts. Blot is ideal for longer form writing.
Been reading Peanut Jones to the kids. Been a while since both kids have been really into a book every single night. Rob Biddulph is a staple in our family since we found his book Blown Away on holiday in Cyprus 6 years ago.
🥶 You know shit has hit the fan when you read the words ‘Polar Vortex’, ‘Frostbite’, ‘Frostnip(?)’ and -30°C. I don’t even know what that means. What does -30°C even mean Steve?
The Status.lol app is what I have been looking for to post random thoughts to status.lol. Sadly could not get this Drafts action to work.
It did pain me to do it but I moved my In Abeyance newsletter over to Substack from Buttondown. My main reason for the move is the constant spam that I was getting and having to manage.
I get the value of something like Substack now.
They have also managed to add some pretty nice features to the newsletter itself. Having the ability to start a discussion thread with everyone subscribed (and that is connected to the app) is an awesome feature. It’s a discussion thread and newsletter manager all wrapped into one.
Another great little feature is how the software generates these little thumbnails that you can share:

So if you’re interested in the built environment and want something concise and punchy, subscribe at Stet.Substack.com.
You can literally spend hours looking at Jonathon Hoefler’s AI generated series of products that never existed. Great application of the technology.

One of the joys of Twitter imploding is the plethora of apps being developed for Mastodon. My new favourite (probably because the icon is so cute) is Mammoth. Designing the Mammoth Icon shows what it takes to create a great icon.
Shovelled my first bit of snow yesterday. It was a token gesture (there really wasn’t that much snow, but thought I would do my civic duty). Winter will be over in a month and then we get to unlocking season. Kids still haven’t had a chance to use their ski sleds.
This one is a little late but there is a story there.
I knew I needed to have something ready to go for this year. A way to track my No-S Diet and also how often I worked on all things Stet.Build. The aim being to rebuild habits that I developed several years ago and that have no fallen away from me because relocating your life to a whole new country is major disruption.
I did most of the design work, but then lost steam when I bought a bunch of calendars from Muji. My thought process was that I won’t need this particular calendar anymore. The Muji ones were more than enough. And yet I found out that they were not enough. They allow me to see the month, but this Actions Calendar gives me so much more information and appreciation of my goals across 12 months.
Available in 2 printer friendly configurations. The Letter edition (for all the North Americans) and the A4 edition (for the rest of the world?). I’ve included a small ‘manual’ in there to describe the design decisions behind the calendar.
I’m also using Gumroad to distribute all things digital come from the site.
📷 I stumbled on this video that was talking about trying to come up with a cheaper version of an every day camera. I’ve been on the hunt for something like this for a while. My original thinking has been that it should be a brand new camera body…but actually I was thinking about this in the wrong way. See my issue was a question of form factor.
While my Sony NEX-6 camera is ok (no Wi-Fi and a decade old sensor), I had some decent lenses but they are big. That bulk ultimately meant that I haven’t used the camera as much as I would have liked. So I decided to buy a cheap-ish pancake lens and see if this develops into a habit
So I ended up buying Toot! This little detail highlighting interactions is wonderful. If you replied and if you got replies. I honestly can’t wait to see what the developer community creates in the social space over the coming years.
I was wrong. The best Mastodon app, by a country mile is a web app. Elk is the way. For the the Micro.bloggers out there it has preferences to hide boosts, favourites and follower count. And the fact that it’s a web app, means features are added regularly.

By far one of the funnest app icon selection ever. Ice Cubes for Mastodon kills it in this aspect. A little choppy on the scrolling on the iPad though - hopefully will be sorted in an update.
The only aspect of Twitter I ‘miss’ is the feature to have a link in the text get supplemented with a thumbnail/link extracting the most prominent image from the link. It’s not always perfect but when it gets the combination right it’s a nice feature.
Finally the new Mac mini is out. After going on nearly 3 years without a Mac, can’t wait to be back.
🖋️ I received my Sailor pen today. Greedily I tore the box open, expecting to see a gleaming ivory pen. Instead I was presented with the orange version. Clearly an error at the factory (it was labelled Ivory on the cardboard sleeve). Will likely push everything back another month.
It’s really nice to see a bunch of people I would usually not follow on Twitter making their way over to Mastodon. Still wondering where to put everyone. Feedbin, Micro.blog or dedicated app. The first is best for reading. The second and third is great for replying and interacting.
The new Sony Walkman music player looks amazing. Digital music has somewhat ruined my appreciation of albums. Maybe a dedicated player would help me on the road to recovery - music was always such a big part of my life, much less so for the last decade.
A short walk to the bakery this afternoon. Sun outside. Snow on the ground. No need for the snow boots, my trusty Timberland Chelsea boots are more than up to the task. It’s taken me years but I’m edging closer to a wardrobe that covers most things.
It’s been soo damn long that something in the theatre space has gotten through to me, but this Elephant and Piggie play is right up my alley. The Mo Willems books have been a revalation. Zane does the reading, with Ryan following intently along. And they both can’t stop laughing.
I’ve never watch a game of ‘football’ in my life, but this acapella NFL theme has certainly piqued my interest - with a song like that, what follows is bound to be epic right.
This post about how to use ChatGPT for lazy parents is the first really practical use I have found for this thing. Kids are loving it. Bedtime stories just got a shot in the arm.
I have been eying up my grail pen, the Ivory Sailor Pro Gear Classic, for years now. My black Sailor Pro Gear Slim has served me well for nearly a decade, but I needed a companion that offered a ‘bigger’ experience.
I finally pulled the trigger on one of these. I originally thought these were standard models, but seems Sailor has pulled production on these (maybe ready for a re-release with the new logo - total speculation on my side).


With this purchase, I think I’m pretty much done on the expensive pen side of things. I have the pens that give me the full range of experience I am looking for. Should arrive next week…
The running joke is that I have had harder summers in Denmark than what is currently passing for winter in Canada. The scary thing of course is that things are going to get much, much worse before it gets any better. Global warming is here to stay and it won’t matter how much we individually try. We’re going to need to technology ourselves out of this hole.
First proper week on my No S-diet. The hardest part for me has always been the evenings. Specifically seconds or snacking after dinner. This has now been replaced with a tea ritual and plenty of water. It’s also super important to have some simple go to meals ready to be heated or cooked.
Fantastic trailer of the new Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy movie, You People. Loved the music, love the comedic tones. What the hell does Eddie Murphy do to continue to look that young? Someone please, please tell me.
Since I arrived in Canada, I have heard whispers. Wait for winter to set in. Starts around the end of November and goes through till April. Except this year is clearly very different. Rather than snow we have rain. Climate change is a real bitch and its only going to get worse.
Saw an elderly gentleman, walking down the street. Fedora, raincoat, long umbrella. Saw litter on the ground and picked it up, threw it in the trash and continued his stroll. Taking pride in his neighbourhood.
This winter break has been about letting my mind wander around. For the majority of 2022, it has been working on overdrive. My energy levels were mostly depleted and I was just mentally tired. It take a good week for a lot of the residue to leave your mind and for you to begin letting ideas and thoughts back in.
In order to quiet down a number of voices in my head I was able to write my hopes and aspirations for some of my key areas of interest. Some are physical items, some are trying to learn new skills. Part of the reason for being so specific is to focus the mind from distraction as the year goes on. The other part is to strike things off as I go forward as a reminder of what was achieved.
📚 Currently reading: Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
Whenever you’re feeling a little blue…then you should definitely spend 2 minutes watching Mufasa getting pumped. A happier video you would be hard pressed to find.
Falling out of habits is very easy. Falling back into the habit is harder.
This is an important way of settling my mind. In 2022 I fell out of the habit, jumping back sporadically. So I’ve decided to stack, time and place. Stack the habit when I make my coffee in the morning and tea in the evening. My journal and pen are located in my kitchen drawer.
I completely fell off the wagon. Part of this is the habit, but equally part of this was having a stack of books that I could jump into. I made a list of books that I have bought that I would like to get stuck into at some point this year. 9 -12 I own and about 3 would be new.
Kindle is now located next to my bed. The aim is to read for 30 minutes a day.
Writing for Stet.Build every day is the other activity that settles my mind. This break I was able to map out Season 5 of In Abeyance while also looking to starting work on volume 2 of the Built Environment Compendium.
The writing will be a daily morning activity, with the achievable aim of writing 100 words. This is the most productive hour of my day.
I’ve found that what little energy I have in the evenings has generally been squandered on aimless internet-ing and the occasional show. The one activity that I have been able to carry out (on those occasions where I could yank myself away from the internet), has been designing. Books. Websites. Whatever.
It was inevitable really. Once a virus gets in the house, its hard to avoid it. Zane gave it to Yasmine and Ryan. I was the last one standing…pfff not anymore.
So I finally broke down and got myself one of these @kaa. I have no idea what to do with it at this stage. Maybe a link to all my places on the internet?
This year I have been preparing myself for the coming year by writing about all the things. Turns out I have around 14 different channels in my life (outside work). This all contributes to much clutter of the mind. Each channel asks for a certain amount of time and space in my mind.
I have only found one way to being able to quiet the sound, which is by writing about each of the channels and letting my mind wonder around in this channel. One of the unexpected benefits of this approach is that the brain starts to make connections previously that had not been previously made.
Finished reading: The Manual by Sam Torode 📚
Finished reading: The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House by Ben Rhodes 📚
Finished reading: The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason 📚
Finished reading: Berlin by Jason Lutes 📚
Finished reading: The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers 📚
Finished reading: Enough by Patrick Rhone 📚

Santa got the kids this Muji pencil sharpener. I don’t know why I’m surprised by just how good it is. Amazing point and no fiddly desk clamp to mess around with.
The ADPT Series 1 is a really well executed, colourful addition to the field-watch-inspired-style on the market.
I remember reading The Man in the High Castle while in London over 15 years ago. I loved the alternative reality, but watching The Handmaid’s Tale has really cemented this as my favourite alternative US reality story. Only downside is you can’t binge too hard as it is a tough watch at times.
This Vox video capturing 2022, in 7 minutes is very well done. Didn’t cover nuclear fusion, which could mark a major turning point in humanity’s survival.
It’s a soft crunch under your feet. The streets are empty. No cars in sight. A new park near your house you’ve not discovered yet. Locking season is done. Winter has begun.

It’s not supposed to be this way Apple. I’m supposed to pay a premium for your products. They should not make me waste hours trying to sort out the audio, just to watch a movie - and literally no solution in sight. In my frustration I’ve gone an ordered a Chromecast.

☕️ I first experienced this tiny little creamer on a visit to Micheal Graves architects over a decade ago. The part that blew my mind is the way it works, no milk drips unlike typical ceramic versions which suck at their only job.
I used to post regularly about things that captured my attention. For years now I have concentrated on my own thoughts but feel that there is space for both things on the site. Unlike in the past, I’ll probably concentrate on photos and commentary (and not worry too much on the links, unless its an artist).

☕️ The Alessi Moka Pot, by David Chipperfield, is a wonderful update to a design classic. At the moment only in the market for one based on looks alone.


🎄 Finally! 10 days of actual down time begins now. It’s been an incredible 12 months for us as a family. Mentally for me, I just need to give myself the time to read some books, do some writing, do some planning for the coming year, work on some more sensible defaults.
Even though I really like the ‘new’ weather app in iOS16, Weatherstrip is such an amazing way to visualise something so fluid like the weather.
Toronto for the coming few days:

🥶 Today is the day that we finally see what Canadian weather is all about. I will admit that so far the weather has been pretty mild in Canada with the exception of a few sporadic days. Winter is coming 1 week early (if we go by the six season rule). Locking season is over.
It happens every time. Whenever I’m wrapping a present (a White Elephant for work), I’m reminded how bad I am at this and how fluid my dad is. He does it for a few summers when he’s 18 and he’s a master for the rest of his life. Says something about the skills you learn early.
Around the time that Zane was born Google released an ad for Gmail called ‘Dear Sophie’. It was fun and sweet and seemingly celebrated the internet. At the time I felt this was a great idea but didn’t want to use Gmail for this.
Fast forward a few years and I’m using my site to capture my thoughts. I began posting some stuff about the kids online but it felt like I was doing something wrong. They had no say in the matter.
Fast forward a few more years beyond that and I’ve finally worked out a way to create my own version of ‘Dear Sophie’. I’ve created separate journals for each of the boys and have begun writing small text messages and adding photos to each of them.
My site is written for my future online reading self. These journals are written for my boys after they’ve grown up and can understand what it took to raise them and what my hopes and thoughts for them were. I can’t wait to fill each journal.
The final piece of all of this was using muscle memory of writing to my site, I use Drafts. Add this action, and modify the url with the following:
dayone://post?entry=[[draft]]&journal=Name_of_Journal
I’ve also gone and tweaked the appearance so that it is distinct from my Micro.blog action list.
📚 It’s taken me ages, but finally finished reading the masterpiece that is Berlin by Jason Lutes. It took him 23 years to complete and hopefully will live on in print for very much longer.
I’ve been using Micro.blog as my default web site hosting for this site for just under 5 years. I’ve written about the why widely - across the five years, it’s functionality has grown way beyond its initial offering. As far as publishing short thoughts on the web, I honestly feel that it has no parallel.
When it comes to managing or editing said posts however, it is feels to me like there is a very clear hole for an app to exist.
This app would need to sync all of your existing posts and photos. You could then switch between posts quickly manage and edit them without the need for a (clunky) web interface - ideally without having to tap edit, just get in there and edit away. There appears to be a new versioning system baked in Micro.blog, this functionality (if available) could be made to allow you to see the differences between the proposed and the existing post.
I don’t know what the technical limitations of such an app is? Would Micro.blog even allow multiple edits to be uploaded at the same time? I guess I am looking for a MarsEdit on iOS or an equivalent to reduce the friction to managing and editing as much as possible.
The Laws of Creativity is definitely on the list for 2023.
I sent out my last newsletter around the time I was starting to make an exit from Denmark. It was the right time to pause my writing activities as I really didn’t need any more pressure than I already had. Fast forward 6 months and we’re now slowly edging towards a modicum of calmness. There is a seeming rhythm to life again. Mentally my brain is not fried anymore and I have begun getting the itch to research, write and draw.
I miss the research, writing, surprise and excitement about all things related to the built environment. What I don’t miss is the stress every month of trying to pull together an article. I do this for myself and those who are interested in how I write about a specific topic. Writing for the new season starts soon.
Wish there was a super simple way to extract what I have posted across an entire year and printed into a simple paperback.
Make the interface so that I can remove posts if I don’t want them and automatically pull all the images into a separate photo section at the back (1 photo per page).
Let me choose the typeface and upload a cover. I know I can do all of that myself but that takes time…
What is the point of having health related data if you don’t use it to better yourself and make better decisions. Seems my phone has been tracking my average steps since around 2015, which is 7 years of data.
My best year was back in 2016 (average of 6000 steps/day), it drops significantly from there and has hovered around the 5000 steps/day for several years now. This year shows a slight uptick of 5200 steps/day.
In the year of less, I intend to sit on my ass less and walk more.
Last week I bought some index cards. It’s been years since I’ve used these and was quickly reminded that these are excellent for capturing random thoughts you get throughout the day.
It finally happened. I finally changed the cover to my 2018 iPad Pro. The Apple one I bought was just falling apart after 4 hard years.
Getting a replacement wasn’t simple, as many covers on Amazon claim they’re not compatible (not sure if that’s just the camera bump issue, or also the buttons). It does have one shortcoming and that’s the fact that when it is folded on itself, the flap doesn’t attach securely to the back of the iPad - for the price however, can’t complain.
My favourite Spider-Man (easily) movie gets a sequel. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Nuclear scientist Marv Adams explains what happened in the successful fusion experiment. A pretty important day really. I really, really hope we do the human thing and science/engineer our way out of environmental disaster (because relying on us to be better is a terrible idea). The big bonus is the delivery of the news. So great.
I rarely repost something I wrote a while back, but my post Two Gifts, from 3 years ago, on why you should write online remains relevant and hopefully useful.
A little earlier than usual, but its time for my annual colour change.
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
This year is a peachy pink. I was originally going to go for a hot pink, but felt it was too loud. The design changes from last year are the three gradient bars at the top and a new colour bar as the section separator. Also gone is the asterix that has been next to the monogram.
First time out with the winter boots. Novelty I’m sure will wear off, but there is something serene walking around on fresh snow. Love the quiet crunch.
I’ve been meandering for the last month or so thinking about my theme for 2023 will be. 2022 was the Year of Momentum. In many, many respects that’s exactly what it was, but it was also hit by the Summer of Disruption which derailed the later half of the year completely. Then this morning I realised that there was only one way to go in 2023, the Year of Less.
Why the Year of Less?
Because I want less disruption.
Less stuff.
Less food.
Less stress.
Less negative thoughts.
Less tiredness.
Less distraction.
Less drama.
Ultimately less of certain things means more of something else - the void has to be filled.
December 9th is Journal Day. Fully agree. I’ll be organizing my space to do this in the morning and in the evenings again.
I don’t tend to talk very much at what I am planning to do throughout the coming year, having said that this coming year appears to be a pretty busy time with the release of multiple projects that have been gestating for several years. Some will be brand new projects, while others will be putting together of material I have created in the past.
I also fully intend to write a short story in November as well and I would like to finish off the short story I started last year as well (but maybe I get to that this year).
Beyond that there will be three Stet.Build projects that I would like to tackle:
Its coming back after a 4 year hiatus.
One of my favourite pages on my site has become the projects page. It’s been growing incrementally and I genuinely feel a sense of achievement when I add something new to the list.
For the month of November, I wrote a story. This is not the first time I have attempted this, however it is the first time that I used my own story as the basis, rather than something imagined. The closest I have to this exercise is my comic story ‘Coffee Beans’ written and illustrated well over a decade ago.
If you were following along, thank you for your time and interest. Otherwise you can now read the entire thing in one place. The Summer of Disruption.
I expect to tweak and edit it over the coming months, but overall it hit the beats I was looking for.
Big fan of Wendover. This latest video on How Florida Got So Weird is truly incredible. Great writing and editing.
30 / The Summer of Disruption
It was a summer like no other. One we would never forget, for all the wrong reasons. Although our family had been separated multiple times, that was not the hardest part. The hardest part was the uncertainty that put every decision we made under great pressure.
We had moved to Canada from Denmark, ironically it is the Danish government that aptly calls this process ‘Family Reunification’. After four seemingly endless months, the family was finally together again.
I opened the front door of the house, just as Yasmine’s taxi was arriving. The kids excitement was palpable. They hurried out the door, ‘Mommy!’
29 / The Summer of Disruption
I woke up early on the Tuesday. Quickly checked the news to see where Hurricane Ian was at? The airport released a statement that they were shutting down and cancelling all flights after 16:30. Yasmine’s flight was due for take off at 12:30.
4 hours.
After waiting four months, four hours was all that separated her from being stranded even longer. What if the flight was delayed? What if the airline decided not to fly that day? Four hours was our window of error.
I took a deep breathe.
I could only think of the ending of the movie ‘Argo’. Her plane took off. She had finally made it out and was en route to Toronto.
28 / The Summer of Disruption
Yasmine woke me up around midnight. ‘Quickly, get onto the website, two tickets have appeared for a Tuesday flight out of Tampa to Toronto. Book one before they go!’
I groggily opened my computer and tried to buy the ticket. My credit card was maxed out. No time to top up funds. I pulled my other credit card and tried again. It went through. We had a ticket out of Tampa.
The next bit of good news came the next morning with the triumphant return of her passport.
Now we just needed a hurricane to behave itself.
The Summer of Disruption has been both the easiest thing that I have written and the hardest. When I landed on my couch in October 2022, I reflected on the past few months and how unnecessarily intense it had been.
Our best laid plans had evaporated and we kept coming up against obstacles. It felt like a story I had to preserve for my kids to learn and understand that life is not an easy journey and will throw seemingly insurmountable challenges. In your darkest moments (and there were plenty this summer), remember to keep moving forward. Fighting for a better future is one of the most human attributes anyone can have.
In writing these short stories, the process of writing them has always been a joy to me. I write these in the evening just before going to bed. This one was a little different in that I wrote the first 10 instalments in one sitting and the last 5 instalments also in one sitting. I knew which beats I had to hit, but how deep I would go into any one aspect was left for the day itself.
One idea that I have is to develop this story into a visual story - a graphic novella. Maybe something for next year, along with a Moon Racket collection as well.
For now there are three instalments left. Hopefully I stick the landing.
27 / The Summer of Disruption
The rest of the weekend felt like an eternity. We started looking at flights out of Tampa that flew to other states first, with onward flights to Canada. Maybe she could drive out of the state and take a flight from there? What about her family. Would they be ok to stay?
‘Do you think I’ll get my passport tomorrow? Do you think I’ll be able to fly out?’
All summer long I had tried to put on a brave and positive face. That things would all work out in the end.
‘I don’t know Yasmine. I really don’t know.’
Considering the summer we had just been through this latest obstacle felt…absurd.
26 / The Summer of Disruption
The news about Hurricane Ian began making the rounds on Thursday. For my entire life, hurricanes were things that happened in far off American lands. Now it was about to happen to us. A one in a hundred year hurricane was heading towards Tampa, a city Yasmine had called home for 3 months.
We got word that Yasmine’s passport was on its way. The earliest it would likely arrive was on Monday. Saturday morning we sat on the decision to buy a ticket for Tuesday, by Saturday afternoon all the flights out of Tampa (to Toronto) were sold out.
Even if she got her passport in time, was she going to make it out? So the weekend of panic began.
25 / The Summer of Disruption
We had to fill in a bunch of forms and pay for a sticker to be put in a passport…except there was two kind of payments needed. The first was an online payment, relevant to a 2022 post-pandemic world, while thd other was an American construct I was familiar with because of adverts for miracle cures or get rich schemes in the back of comics I used to read as a teen called a postal money order.
We missed the money order and there was no other way to get them $12. We had delayed the process by three days. Considering the wait and pressure we had just been through, 3 additional days felt like a drop in the ocean.
Except it wasn’t. We would be tested again by something brewing off the coast of Cuba.
24 / The Summer of Disruption
As the weekend approached we were edging closer and closer to very difficult decisions. This arrangement was not a long term solution. Maybe we had to go back to Denmark and wait it out? Maybe we could start the immigration process to the US? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
The news we had been waiting for all summer came on a Friday. I got a text message from Yasmine.
Her visa application had been accepted.
23 / The Summer of Disruption
I took time off and tried to enjoy Toronto with the kids. We went to parks, bookstores, the Royal Ontario Museum. I took them on the Streetcar and the subway. I took them to a city farm. We went to the mall - an activity that now felt like a real novelty as we had not done this throughout the pandemic.
That entire summer I felt like Charlie Brown. Every time I was close to kicking the ball, Lucy (or the IRCC), kept yanking the ball away from me.
40 days became 50 days.
I am Charlie Brown.
Days passed and we heard nothing back. Our lawyers sent messages to their counterparts and our member of parliament…and we got nothing back. Yasmine’s application was in progress.
50 days became 60 days.
I am Charlie Brown.
Monday came and with it a glimmer of hope. We were now over the number of days the website advised. We should hear back any minute now.
60 days became 65 days.
I am Charlie Brown?
☕️ Quick follow up on yesterday’s post, this new V60 technique really does provide a pretty damn good cup of coffee.
I have been using Hoffman’s (or more accurately a smaller version) v60 technique since it originally came out. Can’t wait to try out his new better 1 Cup V60 Technique.
22 / The Summer of Disruption
Yasmine’s frustration with her situation was amplified further when we realised that from the entire family, she had the biggest claim to entering Canada freely. Turns out her grandfather on her mother’s side was Canadian.
Immigration laws in North America leave a lot to be desired, but in essence, you are not guaranteed citizenship even from parent or grandparent. There are windows that you can trigger things. If you fall outside those windows there is no recourse.
For Yasmine, her claim to Canadian citizenship appears to have completely disappeared in 2009 when the laws were changed.
21 / The Summer of Disruption
The family had fully boarded an emotional rollercoaster. I gathered the kids and our suitcases ready to go to the airport. Our Uber rolled up to our rented apartment in Florida and we said our long goodbyes.
As we left, Zane, who is by far the more sensitive one, burst out into tears about saying goodbye to his mother. Probably not since he was born had my tears flowed as hard. I tried to hide them but I couldn’t hold back the emotion of having to separate the kids from their mother. I reassured him that this would be for a short while and that his mother would join us shortly.
In that moment I knew that this was all just wishful thinking and I was not in control of my family’s future. A faceless government entity was.
20 / The Summer of Disruption
I was’t sure how to approach the subject with Yasmine. When her aunt passed away, I had stayed with Zane, while Yasmine and Ryan flew back. This was a decidedly different affair. I was going with intent of bring back both kids with me.
I knew she would find the whole situation unacceptable.
I knew she would fight it with every fibre of her being.
I knew it would break her.
I also knew that we had little option.
The most we could do is ring fence the amount of time we would let this situation drag on for. We settled on two weeks.
I totally procrastinated about getting a gooseneck kettle. Big mistake. Along with the scales an essential tool in your coffee making arsenal.
19 / The Summer of Disruption
As September started and it was clear that the kids were not going to be starting school with all the other kids. There was a sense of both urgency and resignation jostling for attention and supremacy in equal measure.
Before worrying about Yasmine’s ability to enter one country, we had to turn our attention about over staying our welcome in another. The kids were on a different visa to their mother and their welcome was shortly running out.
18 / The Summer of Disruption
After a couple of weeks I really began to miss my family. A good sign for sure, but there was a considerable mental weight to carry. I wanted to see and experience the city with my family, not on my own.
Another Monday rolled around and the processing time jumped from 30 to 40 days.
‘We’ve been in this situation before’, I would tell myself. ‘It’ll resolve itself in a couple of weeks’, I would reassure myself.
But I was just lying to myself. The reality was that we were far from being ‘resolved’ and we would face several twists and turns before this was over.
The world will be fine without Twitter. In fact I would say that the world will be better off in general if it burned to the ground and people used that energy on something better.
I do feel bad for those that clearly want to express themselves on the internet and have defaulted to what is provided to them by the big tech companies.
My suggestion is to look for the alternatives. There are many. Some with a greater network effect than others. You’ll find people to interact with. That number will grow over time. There is no real hacking the system. If you talk or write about something in an interesting manner or that provides value then others will find you. If they don’t, then at least you have at the very least addressed your itch to express yourself on the internet.
Hopefully though people will realize however that the stream they have been posting to Twitter is of little value beyond the moment. The best way to see if that is the case is to have a look at your archive.
Maybe (and I would say that this is the rule and that there are outlier exceptions) you didn’t create anything of value there.
Maybe your best thoughts lie ahead of you.
Let it burn to the ground and then move somewhere else and build something that gives something back to you.
17 / The Summer of Disruption
It’s around this time that I began looking more closely at the IRCC website (the IRCC being the ‘Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada governmental agency).
The website would get updated every Monday with an estimate of how long you could wait to hear back from them on your case. The countdown began from when they received all your information and biometrics.
When we started this process we were looking at 15 days. That number had now jumped to 30 days. That meant that Yasmine and the kids only needed to be in the AirBnB for a couple of weeks. I took a deep breathe, ‘That’s not so bad’ I told myself.
The canary could now sense that something was definitely not right.
16 / The Summer of Disruption
I don’t remember when the panic started. Was it at midnight? Was it first thing in the morning? Regardless of when it started but there was an incident at my brother-in-laws house.
Seems the washing machine started spewing water out of the front door and flooded the top level. This may have caused an electrical spark. The fire brigade was called in. The kids were yanked out of their beds. There was a scramble to get the family into an AirBnB while emergency work with blowers was carried out. An already downbeat situation got worse
Its around this time that we all started wondering, ‘What else could possibly go wrong?’
15 / The Summer of Disruption
Unlike in Copenhagen, the summer in Toronto was hot and humid but not unbearable (that description id reserved for Gulf summers). The best way to experience a city is not by car, rather it is by foot. The architecture around me was inviting and warm. There were porches and chairs. Many of the houses and buildings were old. Not in a European 100s of years old, but in a North American, wooden facades that have faded and weathered slowly with the passing of the years and haven’t really been maintained.
First things first, breakfast. My first day in Toronto began at a breakfast spot in ‘Little Italy’ - it was the only place open on an early Sunday morning. As I quietly ate my eggs I was reminded of when we moved to Copenhagen three years earlier when again we ran into visa issues. That was resolved pretty quickly though, so hopefully this would be the same.
14 / The Summer of Disruption
The world is vast and we have developed seemingly countless ways to do practically the same thing. Build houses. Buy and sell goods. Raise children. Go to school. Heal ourselves. Live life. Yet each city and country goes about things in a different way.
The feel of discovering a new city is one of the few magical moments that one can manufacture. I highly recommend that everyone challenges themselves to experience this at least a few times in their lives. While I have travelled this journey more than most in the last few years, the magic of discovery was strong in Toronto. The city offered a cornucopia of discovery.
This year has not been very artistic. I am really looking forward to drawing the cover to my short story The Summer of Disruption. Have decided on the style, I am debating whether to go for heavy ink or something considerably more colourful.
13 / The Summer of Disruption
As the summer continued, I felt that I was ready to go back to work. Yasmine and the kids would have to stay back in Florida, hopefully wait a little bit longer for the visa to arrive.
The narrative I told myself was that this was a good thing. That this would allow me to settle into Toronto, get my bearings and get things ready for the family before their arrival. Even though it was a forced decision, it wasn’t a terrible situation. Yet.
Not going to lie, not really sure what my Mastodon account from Micro.blog actually does? It doesn’t seem to syndicate my feed there. So I’ve had to create a new account…I’m missing something right?
Over the last 4-5 years I have tried to keep my site as minimal as possible and use it as a way to share ideas, thoughts and photos. The site is then syndicated around the internet1.
However even though I syndicate to Micro.blog, Twitter, Medium, WordPress, Mastodon and Tumblr I do wonder what the point is?2
For you to grow on any platform you have to be an active member in each of them. I am definitely not in that space. I will interact on occasion but I prefer to work on my little part of the internet and keep pushing things out. What happens with it all is beyond my control.
The only site that I would have liked to be able to cross post was Instagram, but alas that site is hostile to any type of external interaction, and also it’s all about the TikTok-like videos so erm, fuck Instagram. ↩︎
On Twitter there is some interaction, but I also know that my family follows along there. ↩︎
12 / The Summer of Disruption
Sadly the world continues to create a shared reality for millions across the world. The reality of being born to a war torn country. Lebanese. Vietnamese. Afghani. Iraqi. Syrian. Yemeni. Ukrainian.
Those from any of these places know and understand that war not only tears buildings and places apart but also the very fabric of society. It takes decades to grow back and when it comes back, it is never the same. It will never reach what it could have been.
A mad, deranged, decrepit moth flapped it’s wings in Moscow, which sent shockwaves smashing first through Ukraine before continued further afield.
Few were immune from this single moth’s effect. For some the impact was an upended life. A life as a refugee. A generation of displaced immigrants. For others it was as fundamental as the bread they eat being taken away.
For our family, the ramification was that all visas to Canada ground to a halt. Processing times were effectively fabrications heading in the wrong direction.
11 / The Summer of Disruption
Several months earlier Vladimir Putin’s mental health completely disintegrated and he launched his attack on Ukraine. A war that remains completely senseless except in the mind of a madman with an acute Napoleon complex.
History will rightly not be kind to Putin. This disastrous situation importantly highlights just how dangerous mental health is to the stability and prosperity of the world. With this move comes a considerable amount of collateral destruction. Not just to the lives of those inside Ukraine but to all those around the perimeter. Countless were caught out because of this one person. A worse example for a human being you would be hard pressed to find.
I dislike Twitter because I suck at it and because it sucked the air out of blogging back in the 2000s. Some websites survived (and even thrived), but for the rest of us it was never the same. My hope is that the same drain happens over there. Karma bitch!
10 / The Summer of Disruption
The family had a period of relative calm after the chaos of these few weeks. We were able to enjoy the Florida weather. It would be reasonably hot in the morning where I would take the kids on walks and to the community centre pool. By around 5pm the clouds would form and some crazy torrential rains would come down. Even though it rained every day without fail, overall we would wake up to glorious sunshine which we had been mostly deprived of in Copenhagen.
It was a fitting mental respite. The calm before the storm. While the start of the summer was emotionally difficult a second wave of emotional difficulty was heading our way. We were just blissfully unaware of its approach.
Version 2 of Affinity is out. Thats all three apps on three platforms for $100. I mean, you’d be foolish not to.
09 / The Summer of Disruption
Our journey with Canada’s immigration authority would begin at the end of June. This saga would totally disrupt our lives for the rest of the summer.
They needed Yasmines biometrics. Fine. The Canadian embassy is a stones throw from the office in downtown Copenhagen. Except this facility was not available in Denmark. The job of a $50 finger scanner and a web camera was beyond the means of one of the most advanced countries in Europe. Our only option was to get the biometrics in a completely different country.
This was the canary in the coal mine taking its first few good breathes of carbon monoxide.
We linked this action with our trip to Florida. At the start of the summer the service was readily available. 2 weeks later we had to wait 3 weeks for what would turn out to be a 5 minute interaction.
The canary took a few more deep breaths.
Because of strikes across Ontario, schools were closed yesterday. The school supplied us with Chromebooks in case remote learning became a thing (thankfully it didn’t), but it allowed me to take a look at one of these things for the first time. Got an HP machine which was exactly what you want it to be. Compact. Rugged. Well built. Classy Chrome logo in the corner. Don’t know what I would use it for but really liked it.
08 / The Summer of Disruption
It started off with a dull pain at night. By morning it had become sharp. Maybe some tea will help? Maybe its nerves? By noon on a Sunday it was clear she had to see someone. Something just wasn’t right.
Since moving back to America Sharron had never needed to see a doctor, that wasn’t scheduled weeks in advance. The walk-in clinic quickly said to head to the hospital. The hospital quickly confirmed she had a burst appendix and needed an operation.
For days Sharron would say that she had no more tears left. When does an eighty year old suffer from a burst appendix? Sorrow and sadness can get trapped inside but eventually it all finds a way out.
07 / The Summer of Disruption
The mood at the house was understandably sobering and reflective. Death is hard on those left behind, except when you’re a kid. Kids understand that something has changed but they have a slightly different attitude on this loss as memories are still being developed.
The last video that Jamal had sent us was a tour of the community and what he wanted the kids to experience. In a kind of remembrance every morning we would go to the community pool.
The kids brought an energy with their innocence. They didn’t know any better. And that attitude helped us all move a little forward.
All except Sharron. How does a mother who just lost her first born deal with the loss? Her pain would manifest itself in a completely different way. One that none of us could have predicted or expected.
06 / The Summer of Disruption
All we needed was one hotel room for the family to sleep in before heading to the airport at 6am in the morning. Simple right? Except it wasn’t. Try as much as I did, I could not find a single available hotel room anywhere in Copenhagen. You had to travel 3 hours out to find an available room.
Something really strange was going on.
I started to vent to Mindy and as usually she was able to offer some clarity on what was happening in the country. The European dentist convention was being held in Copenhagen that week and every single available hotel room was fully booked.
I’m reminded of that scene in The Croods where the father pulls his entire family over him like a blanket. Needs must. We would not be taking our mattress topper or our pillows with us. The whole family would ‘rough it out’ for the night before waving goodbye to our life in Denmark.
Euro News has a ‘No Comment’ series of clips. This video of twenty years of Putin playing the west is like that, only better, mainly because of the music. Great edit.
I am sooo stuffed. First time in Greektown, I went a little crazy at the restaurant and totally over ordered…and then proceeded to completely over eat. Send help.
05 / The Summer of Disruption
12 days.
Our original plan was to go to Greece for 10 days, see my parents, come back to Denmark, pack our house before flying out to Jamal’s in 12 days time. We missed him by 12 days.
Our plans shifted and changed to suit the new reality we found ourselves in. The first step was to make our exit from Copenhagen. We organised the earliest slot available with the movers and then tried to book a hotel for the night before flying out of the country and heading to Tampa.
The dentists of Europe had other ideas.
It’s not every day that Affinity releases a marketing promo promising stuff. I imagine Publisher for iPad will be released (awesome!) but hopefully also a way to connect with others maybe?
04 / The Summer of Disruption
15 minutes ago.
We were in a rush to get out the door. To get into a taxi. To get to the airport. To get through security. To get onto a plane. To get to Athens. To get to the hotel. To see their grandparents. To see the boys jump into the ocean for the first time in their recent memories.
15 minutes later.
Time instantly became irrelevant. We no longer had anywhere to go, at least not in the immediate future. We never made it out of the house. Yasmine was inconsolable. Jamal wasn’t in the best of health, but the timing was unexpected.
Except maybe in hindsight it wasn’t. The signs were all there, we just chose to ignore them.
03 / The Summer of Disruption
5:26am.
There are moments in your life that take you completely by surprise. They instantly knock the wind out of you. They tighten your chest. The wounds they inflict however are not physical. They are wounds to your mind.
Your mind does not know how. How to respond. How to react. How to make it stop. How to make your very reality different.
For Yasmine, one of these moments was when she was told that her oldest her brother had died.
Really looking forward to the new Smashing Pumpkins album Atum. Being a follow-up to my favourite Pumpkins album is just icing on the cake. Also 33 podcast episodes of Corgan explaining the story behind the music (past and future). Be still my beating heart.
02 / The Summer of Disruption
5:25am.
The phone rings. It’s Sharron. I pick it up half asleep as I am sorting through the final pieces of the suitcases.
“Hi Sharron. Gonna quickly pass you onto Yasmine. In the middle of last minute packing.”
I don’t let her get any words in as I quickly pass the phone over the Yasmine, her voice is weaker than usual. I gestured to Yasmine to keep it brief so that we could make it out of the house by 6am to reach the airport in time.
The world has many ways of making time stop.
01 / The Summer of Disruption
5:10am.
Wake up. Groggy.
We were up till past midnight sorting our suitcases. The preparation chaos is both expected and welcome. We’ve not had to do this for a while. Our first family holiday in over three years. Regardless of how tired we are in the moment, our excitement, for what’s to come, is palpable.
Sun. Beach. Food. Family.
Before we could do any of that, we first had to get out of the house.
🪡 Yesterday I found my seamstress and couldn’t be happier. It’s a skill I really appreciate. Find someone you trust and sort your clothes out - if you bought them off the rack, it’s most likely the fit isn’t right somewhere (it happens but it’s rare).
I really love the ‘micro-story’ format. Roughly 50 words a day for 30 days. I did this in 2019 and 2020. Last year I only managed to publish nine instalments but I will be finishing that story off.
For this November I will be writing/illustrating The Summer of Disruption. I started yesterday and am already on the 6th instalment (I couldn’t help myself).
It’s been a while since I heard an Obama speech. Nothing this man does has a direct impact on my life (maybe tangentially now that I live in Canada?). And yet I continue to listen to him. To be inspired by his words. Not because I believe in ‘America’. America does its own thing and doesn’t care for me.
Rather Obama occupies a group of politicians that I look up to from around the world. People trying to make things better. There are many. Jacinda Arden. Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mario Draghi. Nelson Mandela. Rafik El Hariri. Mikhail Gorbachev.
We should remember them and celebrate them. They don’t last forever.
🍿 Watched 1917 which I thought was excellent. While there are some plot holes, I do enjoy this genre of one-take movies (Apocalypto and Gravity are the other examples that come to mind).
The move clearly weakened my immunity and I’ve been battered by a flu. Took a small walk in the park with the kids and just really started living like a family again in a long time. Crashing again but hoping tomorrow will offer more energy.
Today was the first day of Canadian school for Zane. He’s been outside the school environment for a while now and even then, Danish school did not go onto 3:30pm, so the little guy got tired. He’ll adapt pretty quickly I’m sure.
My favourite moment however was when he saw his brother and gave him a massive hug and wouldn’t let him go. Over the last few years the boys have seen a lot of each other and have developed really strong bonds. While they each have their own interests they share an intersection of being each others best friend.
Wonderful story (so far) out of the revolution in Iran. Keep up the pressure. You will succeed.
It’s moving in day today. I know I am going to be smashed by the end of the day - and I can’t wait. Bring it on.
I don’t think it’s prudent to get one of these just before the start of the winter (pointless in fact) but come the spring I think I will definitely be investing in one of these NIU Scooters.
One seemingly random post led to a slight rabbit hole complete with my annual email to Manton asking for help. All sorted now and finally have my Micro.blog frictionless text and photo posting app completely dialled in.

From the latest Core Intuition podcast was the discussion about friction. For me, the reason why I have stuck with Micro.blog for nearly 5 years and let it become a habit has nothing to do with the Micro.blog web app itself. Rather it has absolutely been the Drafts app. Open the app, type my thoughts, tap the action menu, tap post (with or without title/categories). Done.
Here in Canada, you can definitely hear the Game of Thrones whispers:
Winter is coming.
I for one am actually looking forward to experiencing all four seasons. Summer was hot and needed the AC. Autumn has been an incredible array of colours with crisp mornings but mild afternoons. Winter will be dark and cold and white. Lean into the seasons. At the same time I am also reminded of a saying I had not heard about the super rich:
Winter is an option.
I took the kids with me to the supermarket. On the way there Ryan really wanted to go to his new favourite park that reminded him of the parks in Copenhagen in one specific way - there were a bunch of toys left out for kids to use. I know we have donated our fair share of toys to playgrounds, but this is definitely one of those things that parents should consider as the next place for unused toys. Other kids will get a ton of use from these items that your own child has moved on from.
🦃 Happy Canadian Thanks Giving!
In another example that further highlights that Canadians offer a healthy mixture of both British and American cultures. Apparently the date here is linked to the winter harvest (and is much more of a low key affair).
Things are slowly settling down. Got my driving license. We’ve finally (!) got our house. Was able to get an iPhone 13 for Yasmine. What I have come to realize is that things do eventually get sorted here in Canada, they’re just not in a big rush to get there. Next up, moving into the new house and getting the kids into school.
Graphically speaking I really don’t find the city of Toronto to generally have its sh!t together. I have a much larger post about this but it has been interesting to see the difference. Copenhagen was good. Dubai was better. London was best.
🚗 Part of the joys of moving to a new country means that I seem to always need to constantly sort out driving licenses. Canada is no different. Today I got onto the second rung (there are three in total). Slowly life is starting to fall into place. Next getting a house.
Rory Stewart is easily my favourite politician (even though I really like Obama). This video is an excellent introduction on an articulate politician, who’s politics I don’t subscribe to but, who’s tone, manner and thoughtfulness I fully admire.
It started off with Jamal’s death. Our holiday to Greece was cancelled. As a result I have not seen my parents since the summer of 2019, when we left Dubai and moved to Denmark. A week later we were in Tampa. A city neither myself or Yasmine had ever heard of. In fact, the only reason I had even heard of Tampa was because of Crossgen comics. There was a period of mourning and sadness and uncertainty in the house. I tried to keep it hidden from the boys and let them enjoy the summer. 2 weeks in, my mother-in-law’s appendix burst - caused by the pain from loosing her son.
There is no better way to say this other than the IRCC shat the bed over the summer. Our waiting times went from 1 week to 23 days, to 35 to 45 to 55 to 66 and we finally got the ok at day 73! To not fall foul of any visa issues, I flew out to the US and brought the kids over without their mother. That was a tough decision predicated on a complete leap of faith. The kids would only be separated from their mother for a few weeks maximum.
We were ready for Canada. Sadly, Canada was not ready for us.
The biggest irony in all of this? Of everyone in our family, morally Yasmine has the biggest claim to entering and staying in Canada. Turns out her grandfather was Canadian. Two generations later his granddaughter has to jump through hoops to re-enter. The world we have created has so many fucked up rules.
I am reminded of the final scene from Argo (spoiler alert if you’ve not watched it, you really should). My wife left Tampa 4 hours before they shut down the airport. She was in Tampa for over 3 months and escaped a 1 in 100 year hurricane by 4 hours.
It is completely surreal experience for my entire family to be here in Canada with me. We have a lot of living to get done.
Otavio Cordeiro‘s Micro.publish plugin for Obsidian is coming soon. Obsidian makes my windows experience tolerable and this adds yet another feather in its cap.
🌀 You cannot make this shit up. Yasmine got her passport at 11am today. Which is great. She is booked to fly out tomorrow from Tampa and finally the summer of disruption can end…unless Hurricane fucking Ian has different plans and the flight is cancelled.
Amanda Gorman at the United Nations
I only ask that you care before it’s too late, That you live aware and awake, That you lead with love in hours of hate… Above all, I dare you to do good. So that the world might be great.
It’s not every day that the boys and I spend the evening watching Spider-man Into the Spider-verse. All three of us were glued to this movie. Could this finally be the start of sharing the canonical art list? Could be.
🇨🇦 Finally! Wife’s visa came through yesterday, after waiting for 73 days. It’s been a colossal disruption that has meant the kids are likely going to miss out on the first month of school (making their transition harder), but it’s a short term pain for a long term gain.
On our way back home tonight, Zane noticed a man sleeping on the floor. His first thought was to ask if he was ok. Thus began an awkward conversation about homelessness. Being a child born in the gulf and raised in Copenhagen, this type of thing isn’t something he has ever encountered before.
The truth is that I don’t know enough about the situation here in Canada. Why is it prevalent? Are there any government plans and how robust are they.
We both agreed that it was incredibly sad and Zane’s parting words on this was that he wanted to help this man and that he should fight for his life.
I have been unusually quiet recently. That’s because I don’t want to complain. We find ourselves beholden to the Canadian government that has totally failed with regards to the simplest of visas. No priority system or any granularity to know where we are in the system means we can’t make clear life decisions. It’s so shit. So so shit.
As if he knew I was cheating on him with another book The Hoff publishes his own How To Make The Best Coffee At Home. Yes please.
📚 Currently reading Craft Coffee: a Manual by Jessica Easto. I typically hate books on cooking (cooking via YouTube is game changing), but this page on coffee harvest times showed it was going to be an education.
September has brought with it the weather change I was expecting. It’s slightly cooler. Got a couple of cloudy days with some rain. Having lived in several countries I don’t take this change for granted anymore. It’s not the norm in many countries around the world.
The Stuart & Lau Cary Briefcase single is a real beauty. The only ding against it is that is leans on the larger side.
Midjourney is a NAI (Narrow Artificial Intelligence) that generates artwork. Its biggest claim to fame? Jason Allen used it to create an award winning piece of art.
Drivetest centres in Canada are easily one of the worst institution I have ever had to deal with. Their first come first serve bullshit is so archaic and pointless I don’t even know how to express my frustration. Terrible. Just terrible. Let people book an appointment.
🇨🇦 It’s been an incredibly difficult start to life in Canada. Difficult is a mild way to put it considering that the family has still not arrived here in Canada. The problem? A back log of visas that runs all the way back to several months ago. At first it was inconvenient but manageable. Now it’s starting to have much wider impacts. For a start the kids will not be able to enjoy the first days of school with everyone else. The worst part? There is nothing more I can do than wait and react.
The first piece of writing that I have done in months. Feels fucking great. I really, really missed this. The whole point of taking the summer off to recharge the batteries and regain the hunger, which I am super glad worked as planned.
My favourite part of the writing is blending the historical with the current. The world is an infinitely fascinating place. The issue is that a lot of the good stuff happened before we were born. We would do well to remember that we are standing on the shoulders of giants.
📚 Currently reading A Short History of Canada: Sixth Edition by Desmond Morton. I gave up on waiting for The concise history of Canada to come out. A few chapters in but already getting the overview I was craving.
Have I reached peak Kindle? At the moment I am finding it difficult to get engaged with the books found on my Kindle. It’s a machine I bought earlier this year and just got a protective cover for it (that unlike the official cover from Amazon didn’t cost me a kidney). I’m finding myself drawn to the paper books a great deal more at the moment.
📚 Just finished reading The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. This is a book that was written a few years before the Great Depression and is a number of simple parables collected in a book about personal wealth and how to manage it.
🐈🐩🐹 Just at the local Pet Smart. It’s a world I didn’t know even existed. The industry behind pets and animals is crazy. Saw a lady with a bearded dragon on a leash.
Bullet journalling was introduced 9 years ago. I know because I remember the very first website and how it totally transformed how I did things at work. The website was built to tell you how to use the system. 9 years later the idea has expanded into a course, books, communities and newsletters.
Very cool, except the most basic of things, a reference guide to the system is nowhere to be found. I think this is a colossal loss and missed opportunity. BuJo should be about the system first and foremost. Let those that can benefit from the simplicity of the system run with it.
It’s been an entire month in the city of Toronto. A month in I can definitely say that I am starting to get this place a little and starting to really love it as well.
I have tried a few eateries. A lunchtime Mexican, an Afghani, Italian and a Harry’s burger. All were excellent except a pizza place on Dundas. Totally overpriced and never to receive my patronage again (I always vote with my wallet).
Canada is not a slightly different version of America. It’s actually a very different version. Sure the big highways exist, but the train, bus, tram networks are clearly more robust. The architecture is different. The stores are different. The people landscape is very different.
The biggest and most painful issue has been the fact that I have not really been able to see my family in this entire month. That has been the hardest part of this journey so far. It’s also been unnecessarily delayed by the Canadian government that has not been able to issue a simple enough visa (even though the original timeline was a week). At the moment things are all over the place and causing major disruption. It’s not clear when things might settle down.
Every start is difficult. This one has been much more difficult that it needed to be.
I have been patiently waiting for a book. A book that was released some 10 years ago, with a second edition meant to be released in May of this year. A book that would help me understand the country I have just moved to, A concise History of Canada.
For months the books release has been delayed and seemingly the only place you can buy this book is on Amazon and even then it is at a considerable premium. It’s like they really don’t want this book to succeed. Or bury the thoughts and ideas found inside. What’s that?
I imagine the updated version will have a nice chunky section (or at least it should) about the Canadian colonial genocide of the First Nations people across the decades (a slow systematic system to erase a culture and people that got an apology from the Pope a few weeks ago). Even in a progressive country like Canada, fear of the different is a powerful urge that should not be enabled. Ever.
Ok Hyundai, what is the point of spending advertising dollars on a car you are not selling for three years! The Ioniq car is no better than a bloody concept car.
🔋🚗🪫Well that didn’t go as planned. Waiting list for the Ioniq 5 in Canada is 3 years! You’re putting your name down today in August 2022 for a car that will likely come out in 2025! Electrification my fat ass. This planet is doomed.
Based on the trailer, the new George Miller movie, Three Thousand Years Of Longing looks amazing.
Another Russia is a new podcast (2 episodes out so far) that helps make sense of why a country is and what it could have been. Also the theme music is outstanding.
See a guy eating a croissant and carrying a no descript cup. Investigate where he came from and find a cute little coffee joint, Sam Jones Coffee Bar.
Toronto is really growing on me. Sun was shining. Blue skies. Short walk up to Koreatown. Peach Bubble Tea. A couple of books from the second hand bookstore - I could have easily gotten a lot more (will be heading there in the future for sure).
🍁 This week has flown by. Every day I try and move the needle a little bit, whether it’s in trying to get settled in Toronto more widely and at the new office. Part of me wants to wait for the family to do a lot of the home searching but the visa office is making that hard.
Just had a couple of pizza slices at Eataly. I need to up my pizza game ‘bigly’. Their dough is chewy. Their toppings came fully loaded. Hint of semolina across the crust. Will be diving deeper into the pizza space when we get our house sorted.
The one thing I am not loving in Canada is the constant smell of weed everywhere. Its like I’m back at University. Except I’m really not.
There are many great commencement speeches, this one for the University of Texas by Admiral William H. McRaven, really nails it. There’s even a book that expands on the ten lessons.
In a series of ‘Hey, pretty cool' moments, I saw a guy holding Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday and then saw a guy wearing a ‘Steal like an Artist’ t-shirt - my kinda people :).
🇨🇦 Good Morning Toronto!
Alright, alright, alright. Time to explore this city…actually probably scratch that maybe just enough time today to explore my neighbourhood.
First stop is to get some much needed breakfast and then grab some essentials for the empty fridge.
Saying goodbye to the family today as I head up to Canada on my own. Zane quickly came to terms with this. Ryan however has been getting progressively irate throughout the day.
When he saw his antics were not going to change the inevitable he slumped on the floor watching the only show that gives him comfort at the moment. I don’t normally tear up but talking to him was mega rough. The world must seem unnecessarily complicated to a 4 year old, and he’s probably right.
Last day in Florida. It’s been 4 weeks and have really been able to reset my mind after a looong few COVID years. Thr next wave is on the way. We’ll never beat it (at least not in my lifetime) but hopefully we’ll be able to coexist without it impacting our lives in perpetuity.
I’ve been looking for the Canadian equivalent of NPR and found CBC. Down the little rabbit hole and I find that there is an excellent book section CBC Books. Any other Canadian recommendations are super welcome!
Ryan’s attention to detail does not fail to surprise me, “Daddy, why is there a sign for girls, boys and grandmothers?”
🎸 Morning Blue by Giant Rooks was released a few days ago and it’s quickly become the song of the summer for me. Will be doing a deeper dive into the band.
It took a while to get there (over 5 months), but I finally updated the landing page for my book. I had done the design for this a while back but wanted to spend time on coding it up only after I had actually created all the different versions. The book can be found digitally on Amazon, Apple store, Gumroad and a paperback version from Lulu. Finally I have a link that I can share which has all the information in one place: www.stet.li/bec.

Summer holiday was all about recharging and getting a few things out of the way - formatting the books and sorting out the website is a good haul.
Since my digital detox from 2 years ago, I have been looking for a good source of ‘news’. Most news websites don’t offer the type of coverage that I crave and never in the form that I want it. I subscribed to The Economist for a few months but the regularity meant I could read nothing more. What I wanted was a dense version published less frequently that let me get into a specific topic more than superficially. Turns out form factor and package matters.
Yesterday we went to a bookstore. In this post pandemic world that is a novelty and something many members of the my family have not done. It wasn’t the largest bookstore I have been to but it was several orders bigger than anything in Copenhagen. I unabashedly fell in love. I could have spent the whole day there.
Because of our imminent move to Canada, I refrained from buying more than a single paperback tome of American Affairs, and with it I think I have found my source of ‘news’ and commentary in a vessel that I can absolutely get behind. Put together like a novel, the ‘magazine’ is 99.5% text (with the occasional graph or image). The articles are dense and let you delve into the subject. The paper is emasculate. The cover stock is sublime. The typography outstanding.
Best of all, it’s quarterly. One of the instant subscriptions when I get a permanent place in Canada.
A Florida Man comes into a local grocery store wearing nothing but some khaki shorts (no shirt, not shoes). He’s in his mid 60s. Scruffy beard. He jokingly actions to ‘nick’ a scratch card poking out of a customers back pocket, before passing by me and tapping on my stomach jokingly and heads on into the store.
I typically don’t swoon over luxury watches but OMG does this TUDOR Ranger watch tick all my sensory boxes. From the dark green dial to that pop of red on the tip of the second hand.
I had no idea this existed. It never came through my vision of the comic book world. Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters is a book 30 years in the making by one of my absolute favourite creators of all time. I don’t buy many comics these days, but this will be the first thing I buy when I get to Canada.
Clerks III trailer - going back to the well. Dunno how to feel about this, but likely will watch it.
Based on a semi deep dive into the articles published by @jasraj, I discovered the missing software needed in my book formatting arsenal, Atticus.
It’s a web based tool for formatting and previewing ePubs across devices. Big bonus is the fact that it allows for a ton of things that I couldn’t achieve using Kindle Create. The downside is that it is a little on the pricey side. My thinking is that had I known about this service I would have released my Kindle version months ago. Also the amount of time spent formatting would have been considerably less. Finally, the cost across one book is high. It keeps dropping as I add more books (which I have in the can at the moment).
Based on how it goes with this tool, might also look to use Publisher Rocket as well.
Easily one of my favourite little packages this trip. It’s small. It’s memorable. And it’s a little bit of Americana in a pencil shaped tube.
To all the crazy Americans celebrating their Independence from the clutches of the British Empire, happy 4th of July.
Also this piece of history is pretty incredible…
By a remarkable coincidence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the only two signatories of the Declaration of Independence later to serve as presidents of the United States, both died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration.
— Wikipedia
Turned out really good. The ingredients in North America are a little different to what we got in Europe (which is to be expected). Spices are great. Coconut milk is great. Chicken is great. Water is not hard in this city either. It all adds up.
Now that I have completed putting my book up for sale (in all the places I intend to sell it in) thought it would be good to record the experience and what I learnt (in case others might be looking to replicate the journey).
All in all there are 4 editions across 4 stores:
Nearly 3 years ago I lost my Mac. At the time there were rumours of Apple silicone on the horizon and it didn’t feel like the right time to make a purchase that would least me at least 5 years. My only machine was my 2018 iPad Pro, a device with hardware that was (and is?) way ahead of it’s competition. All that was missing was suitable software.
My original hope was that Affinity would release their desktop publishing app, Publisher, on the iPad relatively soon. We’re still waiting for that release. What I found was the incredibly capable Pages app that could do just about everything I wanted. It did take a while to get used to understanding how some of these things were setup, but being able to edit things across my iPad and iPhone allowed me to iterate at a much faster rate.
Being able to share comments and update a file between myself and Mike (my editor) made the editing process seamless. This space could be better in keeping the comments history (after you’ve accepted the comments), but honestly it’s a nitpick at this stage.
The one feature that I hope Apple adds is the ability to create an Index. This was by far the most time consuming and painful exercise - and which I had to do manually. What is encouraging is that Apple continues to update this app several times a year and continues to make it even more capable with every iteration.
For Gumroad, creating a pdf and an Epub was trivial. As was uploading to the Apple Bookstore. The web interface for iTuneConnect is ok. You can tell which parts are still legacy from before Apple decided to take the web more seriously but overall no complaints.
Reformatting for Amazon was painful but hopefully worthwhile. For this edition I had to move off my iPad Pro and onto a Windows machine I have access to. Export from Pages to Word. Import it into Kindle Create and then go about formatting everything to suit the different format (ePub2?). Sadly I feel that this is a lesser edition than the others on account of not being able to provide some of the native elements that I have included in the other versions (full page images, native tables and graphes). Having said that everything looks sharp on both my Kindle Paperwhite and my iPhone.
I gave up on Draft2Digital pretty quickly because the final version was asking for too many compromises. My text and supplementary images don’t marry well with the type of book that service is catering towards. If you have a ‘novel’ type of book (a cover and then text), then this system will work a charm for you. Everyone else, it’s probably an exercise in frustration.
This has been a really incredible journey for me. From my original ideas of creating these concise books, I now have my first release across several stores and formats. The barrier to entry is exceedingly low, considering that apart from using a windows machine for a day to format the Kindle edition, everything else was done on an iPad (including all the illustrations). Creatively this has been one of the most complete things I have ever worked on. I have 3 more in the tank, although none have gone through the editing process yet. Now that I know the process, hopefully the next ones will come out faster.
🇩🇰💥🔫 I’m actually at a bit of a loss at the event in Denmark. I’m not going to say the event is inconceivable but it is shocking. Modern society and guns just don’t go. Mentally unstable people have the ability to ruin the many lives of others.
Today I paid my yearly subscription to Feedbin for the 10th year in a row. Easily one of my favourite apps on the internet. Here’s to another 10 years!
🔪 Alright. My exploration of an EDC knife is now put on ice until we get to Canada. Not going to risk trying to bring in a knife into Canada. Can happily wait a few weeks and buy it when we’re in the country (albeit a little more expensively but worth the lack of hassle).
Spent the entire day formatting my book using Kindle Create.
What a collosal pain in the ass of a programme.
I mean seriously Amazon, sort your applications out. You’re a technology company with a leading role in the book industry. Their tool is piss poor. A few examples:
I have read a lot of books on my Kindle and yet this lack of finesse is only apparent to me with books that you can tell were not originally intended for this type of format. I have tried my best to create a great Kindle book, but I know it could have been even better, if Amazon had sorted their application out to make best use of their own readers.
Have been looking to add a small knife to my EDC for a while - the majority of the time it will be used for cutting open boxes and envelopes, but this Viper from Off-Grid Knives looks exactly the over engineered knife ‘I need’.
The clouds in Florida have been nothing short of spectacular. Coming from a pretty grey city like Copenhagen it’s strange to get excited about clouds (which were the enemy for years).
Being in the U.S. means you have to sample some of the things that are decidedly American. I decided to begin this journey with some American pencils from Musgrave.
🇺🇸 Surreal. Went to Walmart and picked up a pack of Lagunitas - this is part of my beer exploration mission. A nice lady comes up to me and asks for my ID. I’m no spring chicken and have two young kids in tow. Surreal and kinda stupid really. I know she’s just doing her job and part of that is to ask everyone for ID, even then…
What a ride.
It’s been just shy of 3 years in Denmark. We arrived in the autumn of 2019, filled with enthusiasm and optimism. Fast forward 3 months and we were in lockdown. Being a husband and father during these times was incredibly taxing. Fundamental ideologies between people in the same household would clash. Mine was no different. The common ground for us was fear for our kids. Some would untangle themselves from this mess relatively quickly while we would take years.
I really underestimated the difficulty of the language and it’s overall importance to being able to integrate into the society. This is used as a test really. As a means of separating the wheat from the chaff. Clearly my family were chaff. For all those considering a move, go listen to some Danish and see if it triggers the right happy receptors for you. It’s an important litmus test.
What I will miss about Denmark is the scale. Generally everything is on a human scale. I will miss riding my bike in a country filled with bikes. My work and office which I really felt a part of. I’ll miss the team.
Throughout all this upheaval, we were trying to get to grips and understand this decidedly different nation. Denmark is different by choice, not by accident. Proudly different and incredibly protectionist. There is no Amazon. A handful of MacDonalds (I think 3). Starbucks is not a thing. There are instead local brands and a few (emphasis on few) non-Denmark brands. This lack of choice is by design.
At first I loved the simplicity, but then after a little while I also started craving things that I did not have simple access to. Being part of the European Union means that most of these things are within reach relatively easily, mostly online. But you’re not going to buy chocolate online. Or Franks hot sauce. Or different types of crisps. Or tea. Maybe coffee. A choice beyond a single school for the kids which you might or might not be able to get them into. This lack of choice was something that Mindy (friend from work) would talk about. For her it was salad dressing. Sometimes you need choice. Sometimes it’s about getting more than 2 types of salad dressing.
⛱ First ‘official’ day of the holiday. First proper one since the pandemic began, seemingly a lifetime ago. Laptop closed for all work related endeavours. Will focus on family, myself, reading, writing, drawing, coding and talking. 3 weeks begins now.
Writing one sentence per line
I’ve been writing for years now but this concept by Derek Sivers makes total sense.
✈️ Ok that was mega stressful. Got to the airport 2 hours before and effectively waited for a little over an hour to get checked in. No idea what the issue was but now I can say I know what it’s like to rush through an airport with kids hoping we actually make it on the airplane.
🚚 Moving day. Mostly there. There are always last minute things to take care of but I think we have this.
Last day in the office. Pretty emotional saying goodbye to everyone. It does feel bittersweet but I know the team’s best days are ahead of them and can’t wait to see what they get up to in the future.
Turns out I like creating my own yearly traditions. Every year, for the last 6, I have changed the colours of my site (this is the first year that the design was also changed, more on that in a future post).
Every year, for the last 3 years I buy a new watch. These are not crazy priced watches, by any stretch of the imagination, but modestly priced watches with a function . The collection grows steadily and I get to spend a good amount of time enjoying what I purchased.
For a great part of the year I was sure my yearly purchase was going to be a red dialed Orient Kamasu. Then I was convinced that it was going to be a blue faced automatic watch of some description. I was seesawing between a Christopher Ward Sealander and a Seiko Baby Alpinist. Honestly I can think of any number of others things I can spend $1000 on - maybe in the far and distant future.

Alas, like last year (when I opted for a Vaer Field watch), I went for a brand I was aware of but the cost and function won me over. In this case a Mondaine Helvetica GMT. Moving to Canada means that my parents are in a completely different timezone. Sometimes I do the mental arithmetic needed, sometimes I pull out my phone and check out World Clock (one of my favourite apps that has an excellent use case of haptic feedback). I wasn’t looking for a GMT, but when I saw it, I thought this might actually come in a little handy, glance down, what time is it in Europe/Middle East? Got it.
I’d never seen this particular model before - although I do not pay a great deal of attention to what Mondaine have been up to. Obviously I loved the Erik Spiekermann designed watch faces but this one hit all the right notes for me, except of course it’s not an automatic. I think this is another functional watch for me to enjoy.
Dropped off the modem at the store then decided to take a short stroll back to work take in the Danish architecture.
🦷 Never heard of EuroPerio10 but this dental conference has basically meant every hotel room in Copenhagen is fully booked. Wait.What?
Its clear that I can do a better job with promoting my book. It’s been amazing to see the idea resonate with people but I have been asked on more than one occasion is how do I get a copy. Will work on something this week to make it easy for people to know where to go.
♻️ It incredibly myopic, lazy and immature that the majority of products we buy do not have a predetermined path (beyond landfill or burning) for complete recycling. It simple is not acceptable in 2022 and yet still we (humanity) have not got our shit together on this subject.
🌧 Haven’t been caught in the rain in a good long while. Yeah it sucks as hard as the last time. Doesn’t matter how many times it happens to you.
Plans have all changed and now we officially have 1 week in Copenhagen before we make our move to North America.
I wake up. It’s 5:10am.
I’m a little late in getting up but know that we’ve done most of what needs to be done the night before. It’s our first holiday since 2019, when the world was a very different place. We’ve been preparing this trip for what seems like years, but in reality it’s been a few weeks only.
The phone rings. It’s 5:30am.
It’s Sharron, probably to say good luck on the trip. I can barely hear her voice. She asks if we’re at the airport. I say we’ve just woken up and just getting ready and about to wake up the kids. I pass the phone over to Yasmine.
We never made it to the airport.
A death doesn’t become real to me until I write about what this person meant to me. Sadly family ‘obituaries’ have become a familiar subject for me to write about. I write them to help me remember and celebrate the life of those that have just left us.

My relationship with Jamal started as my oldest brother-in-law, over the years however I came to see him a little differently. Coming into my wife’s family I would be their ‘fourth’ brother. The age difference was a little jarring but amusing at the same time. Jamal, being of my mother’s age, told me a joke that my mother had told me 20 years earlier.
When I was still in Lebanon, in what seems like several lifetimes ago, I remember a conversation I had with him before we decided to leave. I ended it by saying something to the effect that ‘Lebanon was no longer built for its people, it was built for foreigners.’ He clearly agreed because a couple of years after that he had migrated his entire life over to the United States.
Memento Mori. Remember you will die.
Nobody better embodies this concept as a cautionary tale than Jamal. His passing was both shocking but also not so shocking. I knew his wanton disregard for improving his health was shortening his life, but I had no idea (nor did anyone else) just how much shorter that was going to be. Jamal struggled with his weight. This was one of his weaknesses and from there it would spiral into any number of issues that plagued him throughout his life. I’m (slightly) angry at him because he left us exceedingly early. Time and memories were taken away from us.
Shortly after he had moved to Florida, I visited him in his new house and spent a tiny bit of time with him. It was brief but he relished showing me around and his then setup. What I liked about him was his energy for entertaining others, for being around others. Jamals barbecuing was legendary. He was a master storyteller, sometime stretched a little (but always entertaining) and sprinkled with just the right amount of Lebanese bullshit.
He possessed a child like enthusiasm, which is probably why he loved interacting with kids. Maybe because he looked like Santa, white hair and beard, that kids loved him as well. He didn’t have any grandchildren of his own, but my kids were probably the closest he got to that feeling.
From time to time he would send me little videos and jokes. A small little curated collection of his humour. Every time I received one, I would just imagine his laugh and understand why he would send these over to me.
For my part I will miss the big bear.
A lot.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And like that. He’s gone.
📚 This is a relatively ambitious list but would love to get through as many of these books across the next three months:
⛱ Summer is here (well not in Denmark, not fully yet at least), and we’re getting ready to go on our first holiday since arriving nearly 3 years ago. I can’t wait for hot weather, beach, sun, beers and lots of reading.
I write and draw because I absolutely love it. I do it because I find tremendous value in the research, writing and creation process and hopefully you find value in receiving these missives as well.
I don’t however have a team of people doing things for me. I am the sole person responsible for everything around these parts. Doing many things, which I enjoy, takes time. Having an infinite weekly deadline doesn’t really work for me now that I have to split my attention across multiple channels (the newsletter, the books, the website).
And so my In Abeyance newsletter is moving to a ‘seasons’ model.
My intention is to give myself the summer off. Write season 5 and release it in the autumn. The size of each season will depend, but I imagine between 6 and 12 issues. Each season will have a theme, with the next season concentrating on ports. Airports. Shipping ports. Spaceports. Their history, economics, design and future.
The Built Environment Compendium, while the work of three years, is actually the very start of the journey with all things Stet. I am incredibly excited about how the first book turned out - even more so now that physical copies are available.
I am however still learning what works and what doesn’t work in the indie self-publishing world. Pricing was something that I did agonise over a fair amount. I loved the idea that Derek Sivers uses however it didn’t really work for me.
I’ve decided to change the pricing model for the books, but only after I took care of the super early (and incredible) supporters by sending them a paperback version of the book as well (these are now all in the post and on their way). They now have all the versions for roughly the same price as the new pricing:
The final version I am currently working on is the Kindle version. This will likely be priced the same as the digital version and will hopefully drop sometime in the summer.
For all those who have bought it already I want to thank you for the support and would love to hear back from you. For those still on the fence, consider buying a copy (or 2), it’s a concise package of goodness about how the world is built.
Its not every day that two of my favourite interests are combined, watches and coffee. This Brew Watches Metric Retro has so many awesome details (beyond the coffee bean logo on the dial and case back). Only bad thing is the fact you can’t buy one right now.
‘Operation Cortés’ is now in full swing.
In the most sensible way possible, I am sorting out myself first before I help others. Yesterday was all about the clothes and my office. The hope is that by the end of this week we are clear about what we are taking with us.
Like Cortés I am absolutely going to burn those ships as soon as we get to Canada. No more of this jumping around malarkey. Bed in and settle down for the long haul.
Making is difficult. At some point in life you realise whether you are going to continue to be a maker or settling into the role of a consumer. Making is hard because it requires perseverance, patience, practice. It also requires you to grow as a person capable of regular and incremental decisions. Decisions that all together, in concert, guide the thing to become a reality.
With news of DuckDuckGo being a Microsoft spy, good reminder of the existence of Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees.
🍱 The single most important tool in my kitchen is my digital scales. The thing is I have been focusing on measuring the ingredients that go into a meal. Portion control has been left to my hungry eye. Today the penny dropped and I will be measuring the amount on my plate.
I am also really looking forward to meal prepping. It totally is a sensible default.
Totally missed the Bellroy range of sling & cross-body bags. For years I have mainly relied on my Ona camera bag. While I like it, I know there is a better option. Can easily see myself with a couple of size options.
Several years in the making. Super excited to finally have some copies in my hand. Will go on sale next week.
🎪 I am honestly hoping for a mega spring and summer. Something to make up for the past 2½ years of lost time. The ability to make new memories with my family when the kids are not old and magic is still possible. I’m all too aware they are not going to stay this young forever.
🦠 It was inevitable really. Everyone is going to get it at some point. Our family held out 2½ years but the virus has made its way in. By me. This weekend was rough, hopefully we can get through the next few days as best as we can. Hopefully it won’t get the kids too hard.
That went by fast. 5 days in Canada flew by very quickly. Yonge street is definitely not my idea of elegance. Loud. Dirty. Busy. Tired. We then spent a few days in Prince Edward County and that was magic. Red barns. Tractors. Green fields. A yellow school bus in the distance. All the things that I imagined Canada to be was there on show - except moose. Didn’t see any moose.
Insane vision. Watched Dune on the plane. It’s been so long since I’ve seen something as magically put together. Building worlds, while also ensuring you actually cared about the characters shows incredible craftsmanship. Really looking forward to future instalment(s 🤞🏼).
I am enjoying about Canada is the dedication to presenting both English and French in all their communication.
It took three attempts at different stages of my life but finally made it to Canada. Maybe it was a good thing that it didn’t work out earlier on in my life. Allowed me to see more of the world. I can see how things are done differently elsewhere.
I went into WHSmiths (no idea why this exists in the airport when it doesn’t anywhere else in CPH). Saw a copy of Wired but couldn’t bring myself to buy it in protest of the horrendous cover paper which feels like sandpaper. I had hoped they would have changed it. Nope, still terrible.
Proxima Sera is the serif font pairing for Proxima Nova. That ‘x’ has got to be my favourite detail element.
Magic. There is no better way to describe the self check-out process at Uniqlo. My experience is that those machines are legitimately terrible at what they need to do. They never work properly.
The Uniqlo version is different. put your things into a square bowl and the machine automatically picks up everything. The interactive screen is intuitive and responsive. Pay and leave in seconds with a smile on your face. Technology and experience at its best.
It’s been over 2½ years since I got onto a plane. My time in the Middle East, meant I was on a plane regularly. Too much of anything can remove any magic. Now for the first time in years, I’m actually kinda excited about flying. Only took a pandemic to get there again.
Been watching Workin’ Moms, mainly to get a feel for Toronto as a city. Turns out this is a really funny show - certainly within my sensibilities (and probably infinitely more relatable as our timeline with kids matches the shows pretty closely).
Issue 061 of my newsletter In Abeyance is now out. Been on a roll with the new format and schedule and have been enjoying the diversity of topics I’m covering.
The Hobonichi Techo is marketed as a ‘LifeBook’ and for several years I bought into the marketing. The biggest issue I had with the product was the sheer number of wasted space on all the peripheral ornamentation that adorns each page. Fast forward a few years and I went and got myself one of the cheapest Muji A6 blank notebooks, an impulse buy but realised that this is my LifeBook.
What I’ve appreciated is the blank canvas that allows me to use it whenever and for whatever. Everything goes into here. Random thoughts. Email. Ideas for presentations. Ideas for blog posts. Todo lists items. How is this different to a number of Field Notes? Cost ($2.90) and pages (144 pages!). Great value. Highly recommended.
Really love the Bookshelves feature in Micro.blog. One addition that I would like to see is the ability to add categories to help me decide what to read. I might have 15 books in my want pile, grouping types of books would make it easier to choose based on mood.
📚 Currently reading Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen, recommended from the always great Recommendo newsletter. Read the first few pages and I’m totally hooked.
Spring took its merry bloody time getting to Copenhagen, but it has officially arrived and it is glorious.
📚Just finished reading Enough by @patrickrhone. Been on my list for a while. Favourite idea is the unsent letters and fits well into my thoughts on sensible default.
We’ve been watching Love Is Blind Japan and OMG what a window into Japanese mannerisms, fashion, culture (not the pop kind). The biggest difference from the US one is the amount of alcohol they keep knocking back, probably to get them to talk.
I got my second Wordle birdie ever! Haven’t gotten a hole in one yet, mostly I hover around par or a bogey.
🟨⬛⬛🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Just stumbled on Cusdis, a lightweight, privacy-first, open-source comment system that is exactly what I was looking for across my various sites. Already integrated into Stet.Build (coming soon to kaa.bz). Already contributed as I like what Randy is doing.
First Greek style Xoriatiki I’ve ever made. 5 ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt & olive oil). Baking it was different (in a pot and lid).
So our Denmark adventure is coming to an end this summer and we look towards a new home and new life in Toronto.
I’m still processing all the different things that I am really looking forward to in a life in North America, but the access is key. Access to incredible nature. Access to an NBA game. Access to pen shows and comic conventions. Access to large English book stores. Access to North American products that would get crazy taxed in Europe.
Three months will fly past very quickly.
This week was the 4th issue of the new format for In Abeyance. I am actually really enjoy the process and importantly I feel that this is a sustainable format. One idea or insight about the built environment per week. I’ve also managed to clean up my list a bit (getting rid of spammy subscribers and a few other bad actors).
That was disappointing. Just got a printed copy of my book from Lulu.com. A little over a year ago I got a similar print which I thought came out really well.

Fast forward to today and the results are not the same. For a start the binding is worse and the cover has separated already from the front page.

There are issues with the printing alignment - checked the pdf and everything is fine at the source.

The colours have been printed in CMYK, even though previously they would be done in an RGB palette. I’m pretty sure this is a different printing house (the book came from France rather Spain).
Also, so far noticed one small error which I am correcting as I also pull together the Kindle version as well.
We had a mindfulness workshop at work last week. My biggest take away was maintaining a daily gratitude log. Minimum of 3 things that I am grateful for and that I made a direct contribution to. The 2nd part is what made it all click. This makes me look for these small contributions throughout my day and by reliving these at the end of my day.
Initially I was going to do this in my paper journal but I have found that using DayOne is the perfect place for these thoughts.
And like that I finally reached 2000 posts. Based on my current pace it will take 2-3 years to get to the next 1000. Interestingly the flow of ideas does not stop as long as they are short and you fire them out often.
Also while we are on the subject of YouTube videos, my brother made his video debut (I think) and gives some pretty nice insight on financial crime deterrents and how they’re faring - spoiler, not so well it turns out.
My presentation for Micro Camp 2022 is now live. Had a lot of fun doing this and actually I intend to play around with this format on future Stet projects.
Just discovered this tiny guide to adulting by Mike Crittenden. Some very useful sensible defaults in this list.
As human beings we are constantly accumulating and collecting - information, data, objects, memories, scars, pain, email, experiences and so on. This explains why there are so many methods, courses, apps and products designed to help you categorise, manage, store or replace items within your collections.
You will never cease to collect until the day you die. It’s part of being a human. The intention of Sensible Defaults is to start making you more mindful of the existing items in your life and allow you to consider any new ones that you choose to add. The intention is not to achieve the perfect equilibrium, as this will likely be a fools errand. Your needs will change throughout your life and constantly reviewing the items in your life in this manner is exhausting.
The aim rather is to allow you to arrive at a moderate point along your journey whereby most of your surroundings blend around you and where everything has it’s place and provides a specific function in your life.
There will be outlier elements that will likely need to be considered separately. Don’t get bogged down with these items to begin with. Turn your focus to the low hanging fruit first.
Most people’s world is occupied across three distinct containers, the physical, the digital and that vast expanse of the mind.
This does not define every human being on earth. There are people in this world with no electricity, much less internet access and for those millions a digital container is irrelevant. However the other two containers definitely remain relevant.
Each container plays an important role in defining many aspects of our lives. Left unchecked, the containers have the potential to add infinite amounts of weight and baggage over time, like weeds in a garden.
The physical world is the most readily apparent, as everything associated with this container ultimately surrounds us, in plain view. While the digital world can be infinitely larger and potentially more dangerous if not taken into account and understood and managed. Finally, the mind has the absolute biggest impact on everything, as it will impact the way you interact with each of the other two container and has the most power over you.
The first step is to accept the concept of trying to divide your life into these three spaces and then providing the necessary maintenance to each one throughout different phases of your life.
This is the second week that I have sent out my In Abeyance newsletter using the new format. What I love about this new format is that it really is very low friction for me. I get an idea or see something interesting within my week. I write about 500 words around the subject, do some research and don’t overthink it too much. It’s sustainable and long term will not put too much strain on all the other things that I am involved with.
Putin is so far displaced from reality its incredibly disconcerting. Two years ago I had hoped that the pandemic would bring humanity closer together - what a naive moron. This ‘celebration’ for the annexation of Crimea 8 years ago is nothing short of grotesque. While people are dying, these assholes are holding a Trump rally in Russian.
Building something is difficult.
It take incredible patience.
It takes conviction.
And it takes belief.
Belief that things will eventually resonate with a wider audience. Belief in that this thing you are building is the best use of your time. What is the opportunity cost? Are you a victim of the sunken cost fallacy?
Even though I have been building Stet for 3½ years now, in many respects the road begins now, with the very first publication out. Creatively speaking, Stet has been one of my most consistent outlets. It has allowed me to combine all the things that I love to do in a consistent manner. My only concern however is that it is not reaching the wider audience that I imagined for it.
I had hoped that creating something good and useful would yield more reach. I was wrong. At the moment it is a creative distraction. Maybe I overestimated the audience of people interested in reading concise and (I want to believe) interesting articles about the built environment?
I have dipped my toe into Twitter ads, but I feel that this isn’t exactly where my audience is. Rather the one that appear to ‘engage’ more with my posts are definitely living (lurking?) on LinkedIn. The thing is it seems that barrier for entry into this space is $120 minimum from any campaign. Seems like burning $120. I don’t mind betting on myself, what I do mind is betting on myself when LinkedIn makes the rules and I have no idea what the outcome could be.
I have been meaning to review what and how I write about this particular newsletter. I really believe in the format. I love sending it out. I love writing and have really developed a love for it. I love the research, I would do the research and write even if it wasn’t being shared with others. However I did conflate two issues. Writing 2000 word essays is a commitment from anyone to read. It has also lacked a consistent publishing schedule this past year. My antidote to all of this has been to reduce the size of what I am sending out but generally send it out every week.
The full version of issue 053 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, Extreme Environmental Design. This one was actually meant to be published in The Prepared newsletter (this one didn’t quite fit), but I really enjoyed how this came out.
🍿 Just finished watching Turning Red. We’ve not had a family movie in a good long while. This was excellent in that it was completely different to just about every Pixar movie before it, in the best possible way.
My presentation for Micro Camp is out and can be seen here. Thought it would be useful to share some links from the presentation:
Micro Camp: a virtual gathering of the Micro.blog community. I’m presenting in the ‘morning’ of day 2, which has a decidedly Nordic character 🇩🇰🇸🇪.
Really appreciate this Vox video analysing Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 8 moments. The crescendo being the speech to the European Parliament at the very end.
Not been writing much on the site. Mentally I like my small piece of the internet to be filled with information and thoughts of interest. To myself in the future and to others right now.
This period reminds me of a terrible period in the mid-2010s. One night in particular I went to sleep holding my then 3 year old tightly and crying at the state of the world (I just searched for an article and the emotion flooded back).
Sadly our world is one filled with war. Some more brutal than others. It feels that the conflicts are getting larger, but Iraq is a big place. Syria was home to 22 million people.
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.….
— Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947
This speech by the Kenyan U.N. ambassador is an excellent example in how nations in peace should keep pushing forward to a better future rather than lamenting the past. It goes both ways.
It has been a long winter. Long and dark. The darkness is now receding away and the weather, while cold feels fresh. My mood is lifting. We are now getting back into a rhythm and existing hibernation. Thankfully winter is drawing to a close as we enter unlocking.
🇺🇦 Watching war unfold in front of your eyes in slow motion and at scale is something I (everyone?) wish was not real. 45 million people have woken up to the worst possible future for themselves and their families. For what? Differences of ideologies and greed.
Issue 053 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. No link to the issue yet (but you can sign up), because I am doing something a little bit different with how I publish things going forward (which I need to write about).
All the colour palettes I’ve used for my newsletter In Abeyance along with the latest colour for 2022.
You can grab a freshly minted copy of my first book the Built Environment Compendium Vol.01. If you are actively curious about the built environment, this book is for you.
I’ve written about how the idea behind Stet.Build came to me. I quickly set about developing the ideas on my study wall. Never shared this photo but easily one of my favourite exercises when brain storming. In the top right hand corner you can see the original sketch for what I wanted the covers to look like. Also its interesting to see my thoughts on pricing which have evolved since then.
The last year has been all about editing and polishing the script and thankfully had Mike Summers, who was the perfect editor, because he cares about the English languages and its nuances. He pushed and he prodded. He questioned and he commented. We did it all using Pages. Technology has evolved to remove incredible amounts of friction and this has been a perfect example of this. Right there baked into my phone and iPad.
Knowing her current story, you can’t help but cry with Kamila Valieva and her latest performance. The people around her should have protected her. So sad that she wasn’t allowed to compete using her incredible abilities alone.
Creating a book for the digital age brings with it a different set of parameters to consider. The book cover is no longer a tall rectangle. Feeling good about the final book. Woo!
Day before releasing my book. Everything is nearly ready to go. Just need to do final, final, final check. Its turned out even better than I originally imagined 3 years ago and having Mike edit the book has made it infinitely better. Will have more to share about this process.
This video on London basements is really eye opening - considering I worked on one of these projects 10 years ago, clearly contributing to the problem…
Although Chef Jack is the top food teacher, I am really enjoying Food Impromptu with her simple vegan recipes. Its a different type of cooking tutorial video, but the piano music and no words is a great style.
Currently listening to Eddie Vedder’s Earthling. The man still keeps me smiling. Update: Wait new Red Hot Chili Peppers album coming out in April? Totally there.
For prosperity. My Wordle stats for an entire month of play. Had created a bookmark on my Home Screen, which now doesn’t fully work because of the redirect to the New York Times website.
Amazing service for CSS development. CSS Scan Pro certainly approaches web development in a way that works in my brain. The subscription model however is a bit steep. Maybe only paying when am actively developing - which is probably in another few years.
This weekend was centred around food. Cooked the kids souvlaki yesterday (home made pita, tzatziki and beefteki). A vegan sweet potato pie (which was excellent) and then topped off with an Aloo Gobi.
While I am on this coffee kick at the moment, ordered my first physical book in probably over a year, The World Atlas of Coffee by James Hoffmann.
If you want the short, short version of the story. That photo with the farmers and all the red cherries is amazing.
📚 Just finished reading The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers. Great book that was both a great read and super educational. The history of coffee and how it spread easily being the highlight for me (although the escape from Yemen was also high up there).
When I have a stressful period in my life I typically have a few days after the fact to pay for it all with a stinking headache. This time round it came before the fact with a consistently itchy left eye. Went to the doctor as I thought it was an infection. Nope. Stress
We were in Italy and my dad got me my Swiss army knife. It was part of being a Cub Scout. Fast forward some 30 years and I still have that knife. It works, but it’s received no maintenance in that time. It’s squeaky. The knife is blunt. The scissors don’t work. The vibrant red plastic is covered in scratches and the logo has been worn away completely. Trying to open some of the additional features is playing roulette with your fingernails. But the thing works. And I have used it for the odd job for decades.
I’m all about buying purposefully. So I decided to get a pocket knife upgrade. Down the rabbit hole I went. Everything has a passion group around it. Knives is no different. The sites celebrate knife designers. Materials and terms I have never heard. The costs escalate quickly as soon as the country of origin moves away from Asia. I think I will go for the Fox Baby Core in blue…although I am categorically a n00b here, so someone might tell me that I have got this all wrong.
I have heavily relied on things like Feedbin for my staring of important links I stumble across (after all that is likely where I read about them in the first place). Although I have had a Pinboard account for a long time. I decided to call bookmark bankruptcy and just deleted everything. I’m sure there were plenty of gems there, but somehow it didn’t really matter to me. I hadn’t used the service as anything more than a graveyard for links. Although my brain was telling me that all I needed was a nice list, in practice I need something different. Sometimes the tool creates a mental hinderance.
Raindrop.io, might be a better way for me to collect and organise my links in a manner that I actually use them in the future. The main difference is that it can be as visual as I want it to be, allowing the happy triggers in my brain to fire. I decided to centre around collections (rather than tags) and just be purposeful at the addition of things in here. Lets see if this works better for me.
The Book of Boba Fett started off really slowly. I just don’t think an older Boba Fett is all that interesting a character. The return of the Mandalorian breathed a ton of life into the series. Great episode. So many excellent parts.
I know I am decades (?) behind on the genius that is Seinfeld, but these lyrics are going to stick in my head for this show:
Believe it or not, George isn’t at home.
Please leave a message at the beep.
I must be out, or I’d pick up the phone.
Where could I be?
Believe it or not, I’m not home.
One of the things I wanted to add into our life was weekly adventures with the kids. The intent being to do this regardless of the weather outside. Cargo bike has been in storage for a few weeks now on account of the weather being soo rubbish. Can’t really complain though, it is the middle of January. In the Nordics. What exactly do you expect?
Today was a massive ride all the way to Valby park, up to the beach and past the seagulls. Can’t wait for the weather to get really pleasant so that we can also have picnics outside as well.
When I did my major cull during my digital minimalism days my RSS reader took a battering that it never recovered from. This has meant that I have not really been feeding a lot of my interests very well. The thing to maintain is the signal to noise ratio. It’s about finding those quality newsletters and feeds that don’t spam you but provide a steady stream of updates that is not overwhelming.
I am now thoroughly in the dip phase with the thing I’ve built. Has the newsletter reached the audience I imagined for it…in a word no. I am super grateful to the readership that I have. I do however feel that there are many others that have yet to discover the newsletter. Others hungry to learn more about the built world around us, presented in an interesting manner. I just need to work through the dip and come out the other side.
No idea what it is with the name Russell. First Brand, then Peters now Howard. I guess everyone deserves a good laugh. Food for the soul. Howard’s latest show, Lubricant, is on Netflix and just what I needed during these dark and dreary winter months.
Today marks four years on Micro.blog today. One of the best internet services that I subscribe to. What’s not to like?
Like I said. Wild. Bring on year five.
Web Inspector for iOS should be integrated and part of Safari proper. Zhenyi Tan does great work.
I picked up The Monk of Mokha on the back of learning more about coffee. Latest chapter about the history and how it spread across the world is nothing short of amazing and worth the price of admission. If you’re curious about coffee, highly recommended.
Two is a movement right? First we got Wordle, now Minimator a web-app that is a first class citizen on your mobile device. It’s a doodle drawing app with attitude. What I love about both these apps is how polished an experience they both provide.
My overall energy levels have been pretty low since coming back from ‘holiday’. In speaking with several in the ‘office’, I could see I was not alone. Then suddenly I just snapped out of it and got a little pep in my step. Human psychology is a strange thing.
Little strokes fell great oaks.
Milestone today. Finished all the edits from my editor. Have a month of polish before book gets published on the 15th of February. Super excited to have the book out there. It’s taken 3 years from launching the newsletter to this point.
Hardest one by far. My brain just really didn’t click today. Wordle 207 6/6.
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🟨🟨🟨⬛⬛
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Currently going through the final edits of my book, Built Environment Compendium and this comment from my editor Mike is the reason why he is perfect for the job:
A bold and eminently challengeable sentence. You may need to re-write that, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
♟I thought (and hoped) that he would like it. I could not have predicted how much. Zane expects and demands that we play chess daily. Yesterday he got his Queen out early and mullered me. We haven’t even gotten into strategies yet. Can’t wait to see how this interest develops.
Made for the internet. No adverts anywhere to be found. Grabs and holds your attention for about 3min (maybe less) and then tells you to go on your way. See you tomorrow. Nothing more to see here. That is Wordle. I wonder how long such purity can last? For now enjoy it for what it is.
📚 Two incredible books found in the same week. The Managers Handbook and $100M Offers. These are both so, so great, for very different reasons.
This video for the restoration of a burnt Omega watch is nothing short of jaw dropping. This skill and finesse that this lady has is just amazing.
First day back in the ‘office’. Played a ton of Lego. Played a ton of chess. Cooked a ton of good food (and consumed it). Drank. Wrote. Designed. Drew. Read. Watched. Slept. Time to get back to work.
A ‘postcard’ of all the covers from my newsletter In Abeyance for 2021. Complete archive of all 52 issues can be found here.
Issue 052 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, ‘White Elephants’. This is the second from last major thing I wanted to get done this holiday. This is also the last issue that uses the orange colour as we move onto the lime green for 2022.
News Years in Denmark is probably the single most uncivilised evening in an otherwise a generally socially conservative country (compared to other European countries). New Years is when the Danes loose their fucking minds and spend a small fortune on fireworks. All fucking day.
🦠 First time ambulance (with hazmat suits) come to our community to take someone with covid. Signs of our times. Sadly this is likely to remain us (in an elevated capacity) for a few more years.
I’m not going to lie this thing turned out great. The secret (that I have somewhat avoided, unconsciously) is sesame oil in the chicken marinade. The only ingredient I was missing was some broccoli. Next time for sure.
As has become a bit of a tradition on this site, slightly new colour scheme for 2022. I’ve now settled on my sensible default backgrounds and in the future will look to only change the accent colours. For 2022 I’ve gone for lime green.
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2021 was the year of learning. What I have learnt is that in fact I want this to be a constant part of my life. Every year should in some form be the year of learning. This year is when I would say that I finally learnt how to cook. Gaining confidence in the kitchen is an amazing superpower and one I hope to share with my boys. I learnt how to ride a cargo bike. I learnt how to juggle. I learnt about coffee beans (the last space in the coffee world that has eluded me while I learnt brewing techniques).
For 2022, I have decided it shall be the year of momentum. I have put several things in place that I need to continue to build more and more momentum around. Things that I started 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 3 years ago are all on the cusp of bearing fruit. I will persevere through these and make sure I give it my very best. Central to all this is the understanding that you can only control your own actions and reactions. The rest is either a direct consequence or outside your control or ability to influence.
Every 2 years I crack open a new Nanami Cafe Note. 2021 has not been great year for the daily journaling practice. Am determined to rekindle this in 2022. Hobonichi calls their planners ‘Lifebooks’. Any book can have this title and everyone should have one.
Version 2 of Amit’s stat’s plugin just dropped and it really is an important window into your site output. Focusing on your outputs makes you understand where your efforts went. For my part I can see how my general posting dropped this year compared to the incredible consistency of the prior years.
Super fog just came down across Copenhagen. I’ve not seen fog since Dubai. Very different weather conditions of course, currently showing up as -4°C (in Dubai it never got below 18°C).
Christmas is in full swing. Kids in bed. Presents wrapped. This year was harder to keep hidden from the kids. Pretty sure that Ryan will find out Santa’s dirty secret 1st. His main concern was how Santa would get into the house. He was not buying the reasons I was selling.
We now know what iA were referring for their 1st physical product. Craig Mod leaked the project before iA were ready. It makes perfect sense, but I’m not all that interested. After years of experimentation, I’m fine with my selection of notebooks.
Where have all these young chefs been hiding all this time. Following on from Chef Jack, I have found Brian Lagerstrom to be a great watch. Funny (but in a different way), his food uses the same basic tools - although his portions seem massive.
Some baking just before Christmas. This thing turned out perfectly. Hats off to Chef Jack - the man has excellent taste in food.
Procreate has an amazing feature which tracks how a piece of art is made. The cover to the Built Environment Compendium Vol.1 was drawn across a few months and remains the most complicated (technically) drawing I have ever worked on.
Now I find out about Tailwind CSS? Looks amazing, although based on my needs, I think Skeleton is just fine for the most part, the hard part is maintaining and cleaning my CSS file (which halfway through the process devolved into a bit of a mess).
I don’t typically do this, but I thought it would be useful to consider the major items I bought this year. Since moving to Denmark I am increasingly more aware of the purchases we make, because frankly they are limited compared to our materialistic lifestyle in Dubai.
This was the first piece of electronics I bought this year. Excellent build quality. Great size. I never used it beyond a couple of test files. This isn’t to say that I won’t, just that I didn’t incorporate this into my life in 2022. In 2022 I would like to release a single episode at least once a month.
While not electronics, this was the first major purchase of the year. I have decided that I want to generally pace my watch buying to a single timepiece a year. This is a marathon not a sprint. The intention is to slowly build up my collection with purpose. While this watch does not have the heritage of many other watch brands, what I liked about it is that it fit into my yearly sub-theme, which is trying to get sensible defaults in place.
For the start of the pandemic I was using my little laptop screen as my primary device. There was a beauty to basically closing my laptop screen at the end of the week, leaving my desk clean for anything I wanted to do. When it became clear that we are in this for a while longer, I bought myself the largest screen that I thought would be compatible in our tiny little apartment. Its a 4K job. While nowhere near the density of my iPad Pro, it offers a huge step forward from everything work provides, while also setting me up nicely for one of my primarily purchases for next year.
This was a replacement after 8 years with the previous model. A real upgrade. Glad that I waited as long as I did for this upgrade. At this rate I will get the next one at the end of 2029.
This is a downgrade from my Sony WX1000, except they are not really. They function excellently, they just don’t feel premium, because they are not. I bought these because I also got the next item as a replacement. These lasted me a hair under 4 years. The issue was a bit of plastic. Tried to fix it but alas it had to be replaced. At 1/3 the price of the WX1000s, my thinking is that as long as these current ones last over 1.5 years then I am winning.
Last year I lost one earbud. After many months of looking at the alternative, I decide to bite the bullet and re-order these. What I realised is that the case is super important. The overall design and how this thing fits into your ear is super important. The noise cancelling is super important. Jabra hits all of these at a reasonable price (when compared to the alternatives).
We tried to keep using the makeshift Ikea day bed we brought with us from Dubai. It lasted a little under 2 years. It has been a wonderful addition to our living space and adding the lounge section was essential.
We went native with this one and got ourselves a cargo bike. When in Denmark and all that. This is probably Ryan’s favourite thing in the world. He loves vehicles and I can’t wait to use it in the spring and summer to take them all over the city.
Looking at the coming year, the three items I am looking at buying is a Mac Mini, the next watch (looking closely at the Seiko SPB157) and possibly an ivory Pro Gear. Of course I imagine there will be some unscheduled items I will be forced to replace…
Super excited that I can finally say that the digital edition of the Built Environment Compendium Vol.1 is now available for pre-order. For release on the 15th of February 2022. For pricing format, I am following Derek Sivers.
In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power, Green Lantern’s light.
Green Lantern
Happy winter solstice everyone. 4 minutes of extra daylight from tomorrow.
It’s a small change but one that leans into the whole publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere, updated my footer to offer all the options (6 excluding the website) that are currently supported.
It has been years since I designed a completely new website. My toolbox of tricks has remained mostly the same - still using Skeleton, which I absolutely love. What has been fascinating is the scope a modern website now needs to serve. Now you have to effectively design four websites in one - desktop, tablet, mobile and dark mode.
Version 2.0 of Stet.Build, which has seen very little love since it was launched 3 years ago, is a huge leap forward. I’m glad I took the time to make this the best it can be. I always recognised this was a major project and this has taken me around 6 months to complete (not full time of course).
The mock-ups were done in Affinity Designer - probably over a decade since I have used a vector app to design a website. For the most part I was able to replicate these. The annoying part was loosing some of the mock-ups half way through the design process due to some random name saving error. Top tip, save your work outside the Affinity system.
One of my favourite features of the new site, is the archive feature. A little bit of javascript and filtering the table like magic.
When it came to the mobile version, I left it to serendipity and let the pieces fall. I could have spent a little time on this during the mockup stage, however I think that it worked out well in the end.
This was (and remains) the biggest hurdle. This issue was that the individual artwork looked completely out of place in its native form with the bright white background. The only way around this is to recreate 51 drawings that are more suited to the darker background. This is going to be a work in progress as it is not a top priority - but will get to it all eventually. Issue 50 shows where I am heading with this.
Finished the mock ups months ago but needed the space (mentally) to dive into the coding. Certainly rusty, I leant into my constraints. My primary machine is my iPad Pro. I lost my MacBook a couple of years ago, and due to all the Apple laptop keyboard fiasco I never pressed the button. I began coding this on the iPad, but it really was an exercise in misery. Forget what they say, the iPad does not have the versatility for something like web production. Until Apple bring the Dev tools over with Safari, its all counterproductive.
The overall Blot system also made it super easy to work on the site while everything else was live. Probably the best setup for developing a website I have ever worked one. Local files that I save and see the impact direct on the site. Genius implementation.
Totally not worth it. Just cooked Mexican rice. Used a habanero chilli and now my left hand is completely on fire. NOTHING is working. Yogurt. Milk. Lime & salt. Baking soda water. Vodka. Hot water and soap. Nothing! It burns.
Free trail for Music meant an education in mid 90s alternative for the boys. It was loud and it was full of energy. I love that I am now able to introduce them to the stuff that I love…instead of watching mindless toy review videos on YouTube.
For Ryan’s birthday we focused around a Super Mario theme. The centrepiece was the Mario Lego set. I was totally sceptical about this, but it completely captured their imagination in a way that no other Lego set has. Zane then asked for a Sonic version of the same.
Its like having a super power. For my entire life I have been one of those really annoying people that could fall asleep pretty much instantly. As soon as, or often just before, my head hits the pillow I am comically out. The drawback has always been getting back to sleep after I have been woken up. I will only decide to pick up digital media after tossing for an hour or more in bed trying desperately to get back to sleep.
I saw a quick post on Kottke, which ultimately is explained in this link. Breathing exercise to help you go to sleep. I didn’t follow this exactly, but remember the hold your breathe part while you inhale/exhale. Have been trying it for several days and it works! Easily one of the most important things that I have learnt this year. The Year of Learning continues to rock on.
A fun little logo I worked on last night for the upcoming Micro.blog baked-in newsletter for this site. I’ve been sitting on the kaa-pow name for a while (using it mainly as a username when kaa is not there).
Jeff Harvey reminds me of Skottie Young’s hyper-stylised artwork. Love the Mega Man and Spidey sketches.
Got an email this morning that amCharts is shutting down its live website in the coming 6 months. This is one of the clear reasons for not relying on a service that you cannot easily replace. At the start of Stet.Build, I incorporated several graphs into my articles. For the last few years I have avoided this as creating and maintaining these is not based around simple and standard solutions - unless the landscape has changed?
Winter has truly arrived in Denmark. I will say that 2 years in, my body has become accustomed to the cold now - still truly hate the wind when it smacks in your face.
Sahil Lavingia is someone I have been following for a while. This Spotify playlist is an easy way to get into his thoughts. His latest book The Minimalist Entrepreneur is high on my reading list.
The Sonic Colors game (which came out in September) looks incredible. Christmas is going to be fun this year.
Absolutely love these iPhone 13 Schematic Wallpapers. Basic Apple Guy really does great work that offer a nod and a wink to things that make Apple fans smile.
Truly glorious day in the middle of November in Copenhagen. We often go for days (weeks?) without seeing the sun, so when it eventually makes an appearance, its a grand statement. Of course you never get just a carrot, the stick is the temperature was at 0°C this morning.

Latest issue of my newsletter In Abeyance is finally out. Over the last year I have fallen out of my routine for writing in the morning. Part of this has been due to my regular work creeping outside it’s time boundaries.
I have considered making the newsletter easier to write (by writing less) but that defeats the whole point of this endeavour. What I have settled on is accepting that sometimes I will be late but (hopefully) worth the wait.
Surrounding your desk.
Around your television media area.
Across your kitchen (over and under the counters).
Deep inside your walls.
Running under your feet.
They deliver power and signals.
Cables are ubiquitous.
Yet even for an electrical engineer like myself, it would be difficult to argue that they are great to have around. They get tangled up. They fray. They are a necessary evil.
What a glorious place it would be if all your appliances and devices where always charged and ready to go. Wireless power. An idea nearly as old as electricity itself.
Got my Soundcore Q30s today and you can colour me super impressed. For 1/3 the price of what I paid for my Sony pair, 4 years ago, I get great sound, multiple device connectivity, ANC, an app with all the settings. Insane value. Now I just need the equivalent earbuds.
Last week my noise cancelling cans (Sony 1000x mark I) broke (plastic just snapped), so am patiently waiting on the mailman to bring in my replacement. Kids and a 100m2 apartment does not allow work to be done. I decided to spend less and opted for the Anker Soundcore Q30.
09 / Prelude
Nothingness and everything, in a space that is both completely dark and bright at the same time. Except thats not true. In the abyss is a tiny point. Except its not a point at all. Its a seed. A seed both glowing and stealing light at the same time. Finally after seconds or maybe it is millennia, a bright, luminescent green seed begins to sprout.
End Prelude
08 / Prelude
Recognising their stalemate, out of desperation the energies begin to devour each other. Like a snake eating it’s tail. They inch closer and closer to each other. The space they occupy gets smaller and smaller with every bite, until finally they all but consume each other completely. Leaving nothingness.
How to make a map of your mind. I think I am going to start doing this to get stuff out of my head.
07 / Prelude
As the battles continues the two energies manifest further as two distinct entities. One as an angry and violent concubine of spikes exploding in every direction. The other as a flowing sea of tentacles. After discovering that they could not live in harmony with each other, they quickly discover that neither of them can overpower the other either.
06 / Prelude
It doesn’t take very long for the first signs of a struggle to begin. The attacks come from both sides, like soft waves crashing onto the side of thorny rocks. The tentacles wrap around the spikes. The spikes pierce through the tentacles. There is no malice in these violent actions. They flow naturally into one another.
Sylvane was right. It is pretty easy to make good Asian food. You just need a great teacher (Chef Jack is the man to follow).
05 / Prelude
Recognising that this dance cannot continue forever, they shift their strategies. It is not in their nature to live in harmony with each other. One or the other must become dominant. One or the other must control the direction. They retreat completely from each other. The dark begins to manifest a thorny exterior. The bright begins to grow soft rounded tentacles.
📚 Currently reading The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers. This seems like the perfect way to continue this coffee centric week.
04 / Prelude
The energies remain distinct but futilely try and achieve a balance in each other’s presence. This effort offers no result as the draw to overpower is too strong. This leads them instead to engulf each other. First seen as tiny pins of light in the vastness of the black. The pins grow until they all but consume the dark leaving small black specks, like vanilla seeds in milk. Again and again this sequence repeats itself. Again and again.
03 / Prelude
Like two different seas they gently collide. At first the push and pull is gentle, almost soothing in its nature. Back and forth. A gentle wave on the sea. Gradually the interaction becomes more purposeful as the two energies begin to take on a more physical form. They begin to flow into each other. Engulfing some parts, only to surrender others. Constantly in motion.
COP26 is now in full swing and honestly I think its going to be a summit of more empty promises. We cannot simply engineer ourselves out of our situation without fundamental behavioural change. Embracing a reduced carbon footprint is worthless when for every one who does, there is another doing the exact opposite.
Government policies and promises are worthless without an tacit acknowledgement that our lifestyles are just not viable. How much that dial needs to be turned, how much discomfort needs to be spread, is for those governments to collectively decide and agree and then implement. They won’t though. 5 years from now when things are even worse, we will still be discussing the way forward decades into the future.
25,000 delegates descending upon Glasgow to discuss climate change. What the hell are we doing?
02 / Prelude
The Iyes grow at a speed that stretches through an eternity. They mature in tandem with each other. At first there is harmony. Their coexistence is barely registered by the other. They grow in gentle movements, swaying and flowing into each other. Their growth never ends. Eventually they begin to occupy all the conceivable space around them. Where one starts the other ends. Around and around, to infinity.
My coffee education continues. This time at Impact Roasters, an Ethiopian micro-roaster 10 min from my house…wait what? Kinda annoyed I only found out about this now, but also it is good timing because I can now hopefully appreciate it all the more.
01 / Prelude
In the stillness of infinity and at the edge of chaos, they manifest simultaneously. Although they share the same spectrum they exist on either end of it. Their energies and purpose in direct opposition to the other. One forcing the blackest of realities. The other offering the brightest of hopes.
November is nearly upon us. For two years now I have been writing a short story every November. 50 words a day equates to roughly 1500 words a month. In the past I have tried to create completely original ideas that I had never worked on before. This year I have decided to write an idea I had 20 years ago. The story has had many false starts, however I have the overall direction mapped out.
Rather than worrying about doing the story justice, I’m just going to dive into this and see how and where it goes. It is a commitment, because the story won’t be anywhere near done this year. It will take many years to complete at this pace, either way I am really looking forward to sharing this story finally.
Jul (Christmas in Danish) tea season is upon us. A little early? Sure, but I’m not fussed about that. Definitely need a different drink to coffee, which I have been hitting a little too hard these last few months.
I have fallen off the S-diet wagon these last few months. It has been the accumulation of any number of issues. Breakfast and everything till lunch is fine. Lunch is usually fine (rarely seconds) and no snacking until I finish work.
5pm onwards is where the wheels usually come off. The first snack hits. It’s small. Then the seconds come in. Then, depending on how tough the day was, I have a snack in the late evening as well.The evening for me has always been the tricky period to maintain the way I eat.
It seems to be a question of planning. Planning the evening meals so they happen at the right time and that they are a celebration (rather than just good enough) because then there is an incentive to snack or have seconds.
🍳 Chef Jack Ovens has become an staple in my house. I love his videos because they are incredibly instructional. This creamy Thai soup transported me to my happy place. I replaced a couple of ingredients (no bean sprouts in the supermarket). Asian comfort food on a Sunday evening.
Currently doing a major overhaul on the Stet.Build website (first time I do a complete update the website since I started publishing 2½ years ago now). A true revelation has been Textastic, which is by far the most polished environment for writing code on the iPad.
In this online meetings heavy world, the Camera Offset Project reminds you that everything comes at a price.
Been recently moving around the city on my electric powered Babboe and it has been transformational. The ability to travel several km within a safe dedicated bicycle lane, without breaking a sweat and worrying about traffic and parking on the other end is magical.
Being in control of the amount of energy that I exert on a given distance travelled is an amazing incentive of actually using the bike more regularly. There surely is a time and a place for a car, however depending on your daily life this might not actually be all that important really.
I certainly never intend to buy another non electric bike ever again. To all those ‘purists’ thinking about it as a torture exercise, it becomes a mega chore when it’s combined to a daily commute, in all types of weather.
What was meant to be a glorious day out began in abject disaster. A flat tyre. Apparently pretty common on new Babboe bikes as they put thin puncture prone tyres by default. Soo stupid.
Nick Mohammed on Ted Lasso finale. CONTAINS SPOILERS. If you are a Ted Lasso fan, this is a super important read. Great insight into many writing decisions.
Issue 050 of my newsletter In Abeyance is now out. Special issue as it doesn’t dive into a specific topic, rather it provides a loose taxonomy of the built environment and categorises all the articles so far within this taxonomy.
Writing In Abeyance for nearly 3 years I have learnt to be a little more chilled about deadlines, if the newsletter doesn’t feel ready. Last night I was ready to go, but woke up and the theme had galvanised further. Sometimes you need time to let things percolate a little.
I like Arun and what he does. His latest post on choosing a static site generator for a personal site is so far off the mark. You know what you should do if you want a static site? You get yourself an account on Micro.blog. that’s what you do.
The new weather app for the iPhone is exactly what you want from such an app. Completely best in class. It’s only taken them 15 OS versions and an acquisition. Better late than never!
🌂 The rainy season has begun. Prepping myself up for our third winter in Copenhagen. While I don’t mind the rain (have most of the gear to endure), I really dislike the wind. Always have. Wish someone would create a magnetic field that envelops you like an invisible umbrella.
Amazingly my Kindle still works, although the battery is not in great shape. Every new Kindle that gets released, I wonder whether or not I should upgrade. It’s taken 8 years, but the new Kindle Paperwhite might push me towards a meaningful upgrade.
Harvest festival at Zane’s school today. Been doing a lot more thoughtful cooking this last few weeks, so my instant inclination was to see what is the best way to cook the best corn on the cob. Surprisingly easier than you think.
🕹 I don’t normally get excited about video games, but I have been wanting Wipeout for the iPhone for as long as I have had an iPhone.The decade long wait is nearly over once Wipeout Rush is released. Finally.
I have never bought a Nightwing comic. The character has just never appealed. However the current art team might actually change my mind.
Watched the Apple event foolishly hoping for M2 news. Maybe I am getting desensitised by the yearly refresh cycle, but apart from the different activities tracking on the watch I found it hard to get excited about these upgrades. Maybe because I am not in the market for anything?
Just finished my first HIIT workout in nearly a year. Felt pretty rough after it, but as always with these things give it 30 minutes and you feel a lot better for having done the work out. Combined with the cycling I am currently doing, should get into a little better shape (should).
Tried to watch Bird Box. Can’t finish it. Too intense for me. Maybe it’s because I’m a father and my kids are either same age or slightly older than these kids? Just keep pausing.
It’s probably been over a decade since I spent any meaningful time inside a vector tool designing a website. Usually most of my designs are pretty simple and so this step is seemingly superfluous. However the new version of Stet.Build needs a more considered approach, as I intend to live with this design for many years forward. I do wish I could magic the coding up once the design is complete but that is at least another week’s worth of work afterwards.
Mela is an incredibly thoughtful app for collecting and using recipes. As a regular home cook, this is the app I never knew I needed. The exceptional feature for me is scraping the recipes from websites and books and can be exported into markdown.
Just listened to an episode of Deep Questions and was surprised by a reality that I have not been able to articulate. My type of writing is better written as notes, not words or pages. Write several notes a day (in my own words) and the rest of the article will follow.
Issue 049 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, and focuses on biomimicry. This one was harder to write and finish - probably because I have not regained my rhythm since my whole iPad debacle. I also experimented a little bit, veering more on opinion than just facts and analysis.
📺 While I continue to enjoy Ted Lasso, the gratuitous Apple product placement is nothing short of distracting. They really should tone it down.
☕️ One of the biggest reasons to avoid going back to the office? The coffee sucks. In every office around the world. Thinking about asking for a bunch of v60s, a burr grinder, some filters and coffee beans. Seriously, would make an infinitely better cup than the horridness we have.
Went to the comic book store(s) over the weekend. It’s been over a year and a half since I had done that. Didn’t buy anything but it was fun browsing the shelves. Took me back decades to growing up in Athens and living inside Solaris. Hopefully will be taking the kids there soon.
☕ Recently I had not been enjoying my V60 coffee. Then it dawned on me that I have been using a fine grind size (one I use for the Aeropress). It’s impressive how different a cup of coffee tastes depending on grind size - in my case going from a fine 1.5 setting to 3 setting.
I have a new form of obsession, finding my own sensible defaults. I am tantalisingly close to getting most of the way there for a number of aspects of my life. The more defaults I can add, the easier life flows and opens up the opportunity for me to explore beyond the mundane. Although this year was originally intended to be the year of learning, it really has turned into the year of sensible defaults. From clothes, to technology, to the house, to my thoughts and ideas, to what I need.
Every item that is allowed entry into my life has to enhance it in a meaningful and long term manner. Short term gains (such as the euphoria of having purchased something) is very much a thing of the past for me. Impulse buys are not allowed. Every item in my surroundings has a target on its back - unless I have some use for this item, it’s days are limited (sometimes it does take me a little while to get there but get there I do).
🦠 Life is so strange right now. Kids get to go to school and then get to catch some virus, but because it might be 👑, we all get to go to the 👑 testing centre on a Saturday afternoon along with everyone else.
📺 Recommended by my brother, watching ‘The Untold History of the United States’ by Oliver Stone. Just finished WW2 which gives a fascinating portrait of a period I have not given time to understand. It is overwhelming but essential watching to understand the world as it is.
As of today I am a 42 year old stoic believer (I have much road to travel on this road). I have also begun my path towards a better understanding of myself and what is important to me. I now use this marker to reflect. Did I use this year wisely? Did I gain new experiences that I will remember 5 or 10 years from today? Did I create anything that I will be able to share with others? Was I a good father? A good husband? A good mentor, brother, son, cousin? I continue to live my life. Raise my children. Write. Draw. Learn. I continue down a path of self realisation and trying my best to determine what is essential and what is enough.
You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.
— Seneca
And to my Micro.blog twin @hollyhoneychurch, happy birthday to you to.
📚 Currently reading The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes. I bought this book when it first came out in Dubai but never got around to it. Now that he has released his second book, really enjoying his perpective and writing.
🖋 About once a year I finish off an A5 notebook dedicated to all my creative projects (in this instance anything that relates to Stet.Build, In Abeyance and kaa.bz). This time around I decided to pull out the big boy, the Nanami Seven Seas notebook. A 480 page brick of a notebook complete with tomoe river paper. This book is likely going to be around till August 2023. Can’t wait to fill it with ideas, sketches, articles and notes.

While I have so much to say about Obsidian, for now I will only point you to the Kindle Highlighter plugin as a proof of just how incredible this application actually is. Ok, here are a couple of essentials as well: Day Planner and Kanban plugins. These are all md files!
📺 Fascinating documentary about a school that creates the perfect ‘housewife’. I feel that everyone in the world (men & women) should spend a year in such a school to be able to navigate life.
📺 Totally binge watched Narcos: Mexico. Such a great show. Probably one of the best shows I’ve seen on Netflix. Although stylistically not the same as something like Breaking Bad, it has that same level of polish, in the twists and turns and in the character development.
I thought it would be fine. We would take it nice and slow. It’s a straight line, soft downhill with a a few turns at the very end. The thing is it really has been pretty stressful these last few days taking and bringing Zane from school on his bike. Every jut out in the road I see as a trap. Even though it is only 10min on the bike, his concentration meanders. I occasionally see him where he shouldn’t be, so I slow down. I raise my voice. Sometimes he listens. Sometimes he doesn’t. He’s only 7 after all.
So I’ve decided to remove this stress from my daily life. Gonna bite the bullet and buy myself an overpriced cargo bike and go all Danish on the situation. The reason it’s taken me this long is down to need. I haven’t really needed this until this week, but I imagine it will be a very important addition to the family. Ryan will no doubt learn to love going on rides for the fun of it. Not decided which one to go for yet but aim to have that resolved by the end of tomorrow.
First day of school for Zane. He was so excited to get there and be part of this new world. His younger brother is certainly feeling the absence but as with all things he will learn to get used to it. On the positive he gains more attention from myself and Yasmine.
Love the very start of a new issue for In Abeyance. There is so much opportunity, so much to learn and dive deep. This months topic was borne out of another topic (which I will get to in a future issue).
You know things are stupid with the weather when all day it’s been sunny with scattered showers…at the same time. Reminds me of the truly strange Arabic expression to describe this, ‘The Devil is washing his wife.’
These last few days have been exhausting. I decided to tackle the house in every single manner. When I began this process, I just knew that we had too much ‘junk’ around us. We certainly were not using everything and in a small little house, it all becomes more apparent as things tend to pile on top of each other. So I began the process of Marie Kondo-ing the house. Be ruthless, but remember to be kind to yourself throughout the process.
I have done this before but in a different time and place, during transition periods between country to country. This is the first time I review the situation within the confines of our lives as they exist now. For the most part, I was able to remove a large amount of things however there were a few things also coming in - either as necessary replacements or omissions that became clear after the clutter was removed.
While it might seem wasteful to dedicate such a large amount of my holiday time to sorting out our house this process actually frees my physical and mental space to focus on what is important. The greatest feeling I have had post this exercise has been the fact that there is now a specific place for everything. The joy of Mise en place, in a small family of four, is liberating. I highly recommend taking the time, no matter how much of a chore it feels like. Your future self will thank you for it.
🍻 Met up with Nicolo and Valya today. Had a few No.5 from Bootleggers. Way back home was through a summer shower, which surprisingly I didn’t mind - especially once it stopped and the sun came out a little, meandering through the empty roads of Copenhagen at ‘night’.
📚 Just finished Final Incal by Alexandro Jodorowsky and José Ladrönn. It’s been a while since I dedicated some proper time to a graphic novel and this has been on my list for a while now since I bought it several years ago. Jodorowsky is one of my favourite writers in any medium. I would recommend the truly sublime Son of the Gun and The White Lama along with the epic Saga of the Metabarons.
What he is best known for however is The Incal. A mad space opera that set the foundation for a universe. I can see the reticence that Morbius had in returning to this world. Readers of the original series will understand.
This series was fun and mad, but honestly it wasn’t as compelling as the other works I’ve mentioned, which set an incredibly high bar. I’d like to say it’s me, but honestly the dialogue didn’t flow for me. Ladrönn‘s artwork couldn’t capture the emotion of the characters. While the story flowed, it certainly doesn’t feel ‘final’ in any way. Many of these characters can and likely will return in new stories. I’d give this one a miss and rather go for the other series I’ve mentioned.
Last few days has been about discovering Copenhagen. Today was about sorting out the house. We finally got a proper couch (rather than the makeshift rubbish we bought with us from Dubai). Took me all afternoon to build it, but it was totally worth it.
Day 2 of our staycation. We decided to forsake the air travel this year and try and enjoy Copenhagen in a manner we have not really had a chance to since moving here a year and a half ago. Yesterday I ventured into town on my bike and just took in the sights like a proper tourist. Today it was an Amager day out. Tomorrow we might be going to the Zoo for the very first time ever….we live 15min walk away.
Took the kids for ice cream today. Noticed a nice little place not to far from the house. It was a whole thing. With every step we walked, the kids were getting more excited. We arrived and the place was shut. Zane was the first to really get upset. Gentle guy walking just behind us goes, ‘Not to worry, go around the corner there is another excellent ice cream place.’ So we did. And it was excellent, had a few Nordic flavours I have never tried before (something that looked like Mango but wasn’t). Definitely going to be returning.
While there are no native Windows apps for Micro.Blog, I would be happy with an Obsidian plugin that posts to my site (with or without a title). Then again, I think that everything should be built ontop of Obsidian at the moment. Easily my favourite software of 2021.
This post by Austin Kleon about the ‘twisters’ and ‘yips’ is great. I have been finding it more difficult recently to carve out the time in the morning to do my regular writing. It’s all a mental game. The opposite of mis-en-place.
📚 Been meaning to dive into David Epstein’s book Range for a while. I feel like my personal experiences follow his thinking (what I’ve understood from interviews), so will be nice to go deeper on this.
📺 Great way to celebrate the return of Ted Lasso, with an excellent set of wallpapers from The Iconfactory.
Some thought on Tokyo ‘2020’ opening ceremony:
Issue 048 of In Abeyance is out. This issue is late, a first in the 2½ years of publishing. It’s hard to write when your main and then your backup work machines both fail. This knocked my writing, researching and publishing rhythm off its axis. So I took a month off. This month its all about nuclear power, Olympic beds and Muji horology.
The latest Google Doodle, Doodle Champion Island Games, is next level…literally. Just a wonderful diversion to a pretty standard action, searching for something online.
For the last year I have been trying to work out a ‘capture-configure-control’ setup. For those wondering what that is start here. Newport recommends Trello, which I think is bloated. I tried using Basecamp, but I found the system offered friction I couldn’t overcome properly (it’s me not the software). Enter two plugins for Obsidian, that in tandem work together to focus my mind:
There is actually a third feature that I have found invaluable and that is the fact by default Obsidian allows you to fold lists. Capturing just became much easier and either move them into their own note or straight into the Kanban ready for action. Obsidian really has been a complete revelation in how mature, solid and versatile it is out the gate. I hope development continues on this app for many years to come.
Took a forced month off from publishing In Abeyance - because of computing issues that knocked me off my rhythm. This is the first time I have had to miss a month in 2½ years. In the back of my mind I hope to make it up before the end of the year but won’t beat myself up if it doesn’t happen.
Finished reading: The Story Of The Lost Child by Elena Ferrante 📚.
This one I absolutely devoured. I can’t remember the last time I read three books in a series as quickly as this. Incredible series and one that stays with you long after you have put it down.
I have been on a massive Elena Ferrante binge at the moment. Torn through the 2nd and 3rd Neapolitan Novels and straight onto the 4th. Tarantino’s special power is music. Khaled Hosseini makes you cry at the end of every one of his books.
In the 3rd book Ferrante made me cry at a scene that did not involve anything but two friends talking about her opinion of the others work. It was a masterful piece of writing and probably the strongest emotional hook I have read in years.
💉 2nd Vaccine day. Yay! One month apart exactly. Oh sure, keep hearing that Delta is coming, but hopefully we’ll have a booster shot for that. We might end up having boosters in the future. For now, I am protected and hopefully many around me will also be protected.
It took me a year and a half of working at home before I decided to invest bigly in a screen for my desk. Learning from my previous mistake of not buying the largest television screen available (some 6 years ago), I decided to go all out with my latest purchase, the AOC U32P2, a name that flows of the tongue I know. The real estate is incredible. I’m reminded of this classic photo of Steve Jobs in his office. When I first saw it I thought, ‘Don’t care much for everything in this office, but what an incredible size for a screen’.
What a great string of novels I have read so far this year. The Story of a New Name has been the perfect book for the summer. The hardest part is selecting the book that speaks to me. I have found that sometimes you have to try a few. Don’t force a book if it’s not connecting.
I spoke too soon. The seven levels of hell that is Apple support continues. It has gotten soo bad at the moment that I am regularly loosing my head on the phone. I know I shouldn’t but it has been the worst customer service experience I have ever had.
I think, maybe, just maybe that after 3 weeks of painful (nay, tortuous) back and forth with Apple Support that I may have finally gotten the result I was looking for. It was an incredible slog and I have begun planning a transition away from Apple. What a shit show.
June is the first time that I missed publishing an issue of In Abeyance on time. Part of the reason is the fact that I don’t have a personal computer (save my iPhone). My MacBook died a couple of years ago. My iPad is getting fixed (or not depends on Apple at this stage). While the iPhone is great for capturing short thoughts (like this blog post), it’s a pretty poor experience for the longer form writing - screen is just too small. I have been looking at the AOC monitor for my home office. Combined with the Shiftscreen app, I could have avoided the delay in getting the newsletter out.
Today marks one month back on the No-S Diet. I was doing really well for most of last year but around October I fell off the wagon. The first month is always the hardest to settle into a rhythm (I suppose this is true of anything you do). Now it’s all about not breaking the chain because this is a marathon not a sprint.
A little over a year after COVID began and things are beginning to open up here in Copenhagen. Of course they ‘opened’ a little earlier by means of testing regularly and a Coronapas - not going to lie, the whole process just did not appeal.
Being half vaccinated your mind can start doing something it couldn’t before. Making plans for the future. Some medium term and some longer term plans. Maybe go for a holiday? Maybe even get back onto a plane? Maybe get to see family again in the coming few months.
While I know I have lost many experiences this last year, at the same time I have gained much. More time with my kids. More time for the tempo of my body to slow down. More time for reflection. More time for boredom. More time for reading. More time for writing. More time for getting my ‘house’ in order.
I hope others were able to get something out of a world changing event that will be seared in our memories for many years to come.
Heliotrope is the latest release from one of my favourite type designers. While I am not in the market for something like this I love the name, the story and the italics. Concourse is my next purchase, once I have a project.
It’s been nearly 2 years without MacOS. iOS has served me reasonably well, although somethings should not be this difficult to do. More importantly my machine is in the shop to get fixed (again!). Brings me to Windows 11. Throughout all of this Windows has remained my work machine. This update looks to make my daily experience that much better.
📚Humankind by Rutger Bregman is probably the best book I have read in the last 10 years.
Part of the reason for this is simply that it opened up a certain part of me that was yearning to come out. My optimistic side. I used to identify myself as an optimist, but slowly time beat that out of me as I became increasingly more cynical of the world and humanity around me. This view was somewhat amplified by any number of sources around me. News outlets. Friends. Family. Strangers. Life’s many experiences. A global pandemic.
What I needed was something uplifting. Something that could hopefully awaken the old me. Something that could help me work through and understand the injustices and terribleness that is so prevalent in our world today. The why is only the start of the process. The how can we change this for a better situation is far more interesting.
Will definitely be buying a paper copy of this book and run through some of the copious sources and counter arguments referenced throughout the book. If you are looking for something to present a different worldview than the one you likely have (which sometimes rubs you the wrong way because you want to believe in the alternative), then I highly recommend this book.
Started working on a typeface based on my handwriting 2 years ago. Its not baked yet - because it really isn’t a priority - but it was fun to remind myself where it stands right now.
I am really loving the look of these Dan Cederholm books. While my brain is telling me to just buy the ebook, my heart really wants the physical copies.
⚽️ It’s great to have the Euros on while living in Europe. All the matches are at the perfect time. No classics yet but overall a good tournament so far. Only ding is how tired most of these stadiums look like.
The new ‘Reading Ruler’ setting on the Kindle app is a subtle but wonderful addition to a reading app. Wish web browsers had this feature.
💉=🖕🦠
I know, very childish, but I feel in that mood following my first shot! Can’t get this song out of my head.
My yearly iPad issue continues. Seems the USB-C connector is busted (it works in only one direction) and the battery gremlins are back again. For all it’s rock solid performance the hardware on this machine has not been reliable - even considering it was not a road warrior!
Slowly been amassing this beautiful range of freely available printed material across a wide range of subjects.
⌚ Today is definitely a watch related day. Got a 60th Anniversary catalogue from Sinn and then this article that goes inside all four Rolex manufacturing facilities is an excellent way to dive deeper into the world of watches.
And like that war on the email pixel has been declared. I’m not going to say I will miss it. The only useful aspect of this technology for me is to see who has or hasn’t opened an email in a while. Truth is even then I haven’t used this feature to cull addresses.
I imagine that this then becomes an issue only as a newsletter grows. There will have to be new solutions adopted to address this. This could be as simple as a yearly poll that asks you to confirm you still want to receive the email, otherwise you will be removed. This might get annoying if everyone adopts the same technique (think that GDPR shitfest from a few years ago).
What people click on is even of less interest. I’m just just happy they found it engaging. I guess in the new world of newsletters, the only thing that matters is if someone signed up or removed themselves. If they sent you a response. Nobody ever seems to forward on an email so no need to worry about that.
🍎 I had completely forgotten that WWDC starts today. Nothing earth-shattering, just solid improvements across the board. As for favourite new feature: the keyboard shortcuts & the new multi-tasking looks great. The Safari and Weather app updates are solid as well.
I’ve linked to the Poetry Foundation before, but I just stubbled across this site again and took a moment to appreciate the care and attention to detail. Wonderful looking website with an equally lovely looking publication.
💉 Vaccine-booking-day finally arrived in Denmark. Like everyone else around the world I have been waiting for this day for months - honestly feels like years at this stage. I was a few months off when I thought this day would come (early optimism was for sometime in April/May).
I was given access to a beta version of one of my favourite iOS editors. An already great editor just got an incredible array of polish. Will have tons to say when this is released. For now it put a stupid smile on my face.
📚 Currently reading Human Kind. A Hopeful History. Just got to this amazing parable (apparently from the internet somewhere):
An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good – peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’
After a moment, the boy asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’
The old man smiles. ‘The one you feed.’
Its not every day that I decide upon next month’s subject and instantly have the image of the cover clear in my head. Maybe after 2½ years of doing this, I am finally getting the overall hang of things.
I’m doing a ton of fun research at the moment about various paper products (will be sharing soon), but in the process I stumbled on the work of George Townley. Architectural drawings, mainly of and around LA.
Issue 047 of In Abeyance is out. This issue is about Brutalism, a subject with seemingly infinite avenues to explore. Also in this issue, Art Gensler and Dieter Rams.
Be A Man had me stitches. The Boston accent is just icing on the cake.
Not sure how this happened, but apparently I have read on my kindle every single week for a little over a year now. This is the kind of metric tracking that I can really get behind - until a couple of weeks ago I had no idea this feature existed. Looking through the log, there were a couple of weeks where I read only once. In fact the 17 day streak is a far cry from my longest streak of 89 consecutive days. That is now clearly in my crosshairs.
I don’t normally talk about the weather, because I live in Northern Europe and the weather here is not great. May however has been probably one of the worst months in memory. Rainy, windy and cold, weeks before June. Having said that this weekend looks to be different. Bright & sunny. Definitely taking my bike for a long ride.
I have been on and off on the No-S Diet for the last year. I have since decided to jump back into it but I decided to read the book first. Tracking behaviour as opposed to results is exactly the kind of powerful insight that can help from straying too often.
I walk out my front door. The lift is to my right. Press the button. While waiting I fumble in my pocket for my earbuds. Pop the 1st one. Doors opened, I walked in. Take the 2nd bud out. It falls out of my hand. Drops between my legs and rolls behind me into the gap between the lift and the landing. The doors shut and my earbud is gone forever.
For the last month there has been a steady number of new subscribers to my newsletter. It ranged between 2-5 new subscribers a day. The thing is I couldn’t understand where they were coming from. My site analytics did not reflect this influx. Turns out they might have been added by a bot. Buttondown makes things easy to manage users and send a simple email to confirm (by doing nothing) or unsubscribe if it is a bot.
It really is incredible what my parents had to go through when they moved to Greece in the 80s. Crucially they had to do it without Google translate and the internet. While they eventually got into the culture and feeling at home there it took time. Without a doubt the biggest barrier for entry however was the language. Decades later I am going through the exact same barrier to entry here in Denmark. The spoken version of this language is incredibly foreign to me, bearing no resemblance to any of my other languages. This weekend was the first time it has affected me - couldn’t ride my bike because of a faulty lock. Turns out there was an alternative, if I knew how to read a handwritten note.
So been looking for some Middle Eastern ingredients (you won’t find much of this stuff at the plethora of local supermarkets). This little shop has saved the day. Pomegranate molasses! Zaatar! Foul Memdamas!
As I dip my toes into the world of watches, I have decided to play around in the micro brand side of things and slowly move into more expensive options as I build my collection. There are two brands that seemingly have cornered this market as far as I’m concerned with their offerings are Vaer and Sternglas. What’s great about both is that they are not targeting the same styles, however they are approaching things in a very similar manner. One is based in the U.S and the other in Germany and both released a watch this week.
The interesting things relating to watch materials and colours are happening in the micro brand space. These new manufacturers do not have heritage to rely upon and so they have to provide a compelling reason to buy them over more established brands (that are likely to be here, 10, 20 years from now). These two brands don’t skimp on the specifications and have stayed true to their chosen design aesthetic.
Sternglas has just released the Modesto, a very enticing watch with the option of a very simple black or white dial design. This naturally appeals to me on several levels, however if I think their very first idea, the Naos a better distillation of what they are good at.
I am definitely not on the market for another Vaer watch (considering I just got one a month ago), but this is a real beauty. The D4 is their entry model dive watch. What I love about these dive watches is how the naming directly relates to their faces. I would have loved a Tropic version of the D4, however if I was to go for one of these D4s it would be the Atlantic version.
Even though I follow Frere-Jones on Twitter, I completely missed that they worked on a new typeface. And what a typeface! Seaford is available now if you are on Windows (which I am at work). Not going to be able to use this for any of my official communication (we are bound to Times New Roman) but I can use it for just about anything else.
When I set to work on Stet.Build, I knew that this was a longterm project. That the many pieces that I was putting in place would not really find their complete form until many years later.
Now three years later I am edging closer and can finally share some of the very original ideas that got me excited so long ago. The very first book, the Built Environment Compendium Vol.1 is complete and is now ready for pre-ordering. I am still in conversations with my editor for final edits to the text, which should hopefully be done within the month.
This is the first time I use Gumroad and I am actually pretty excited to see what this platform has to offer to digital content creators. Overall I like the simplicity of the platform.
It’s always a ton of fun when work starts on the next issue. All the possibilities of a topic I know very little about, waiting to be discovered. Usually one the fears I have is whether or not a subject has enough ‘meat’ on the bone. Can I dive into it and find the nuggets that I am looking for. Delightful details that put a smile on my face that I can also share. I feel reasonably comfortable with this one, although speaking about architecture in the abstract is a hard skill to employ.
It’s been years since I worked on a website design in vector format (why waste my time when I can just code what is in my head). This one is different and needs a little more care and attention.
Super interesting concept from Cal Newport about reading. The goal is to read two chapters a day. Doesn’t really matter what you are reading to begin with - the consistent nature of the exercise will eventually diversify the pool. Its got enough friction and is attainable to become a meaningful habit. I keep falling in and out of reading at the moment. Maybe this will right the course a little.
Zane has recently discovered the work of Sir David Attenborough and is a new mega-fan. Drew him a postcard. Then in a Corona-meta-what-the-hell-just-happened made sure that he had received the vaccine and was going to be safe.
Its always a great boost when there is a huge influx of new readers to the newsletter. I then usually scratch my head for a few days before I find out the source, but it is always welcome and one of the exciting times in a newsletters life.
Been wanting a photo that I can use online for a while now. Thanks to my wife and a lot of patience, have a few that don’t suck.
Issue 046 of In Abeyance is out. This issue is about Shipping Container Architecture. Also features The Ocean Cleanup, Prometheus Fuels, Michael Sorkin and the Ferrule.
This issue is a little late, but I’ve been a little preoccupied with life recently. Had a lot of fun creating the artwork this time.
Obsidian on iOS & Android is now closed beta. Super excited about this development. One of my favourite and most used apps on Windows is coming to iOS. Can it supplant 1Writer?
Now that the manuscript is done, time to turn my attention onto the Stet.Build website. In dire need of a ton of attention. The iPad has been a wonderful machine in creating the work, the only area it really doesn’t do a very good job with is coding.
That’s not entirely true as there are a number of capable code editors (Coda from Panic being one of them). The only reasonable option is Inspect Browser. It was recently upgraded to 2.0 but it really is an unfortunate omission from the iPad toolbox - easily one of the things I miss the most from not having a Mac.
It took 3 years, but I finally submitted my draft of the BEC to my editor. Incredibly I was only 23 days outside my target date of completing the whole book, but I had a couple of technical hiccups which slowed things a little. I shared two quotes with Mike to frame what I hoped would be achieved through this process. The first is by Ryan Holiday:
No one creates flawless first drafts. And nobody creates better second drafts without the intervention of someone else. Nobody.
The second is by Neil Gaiman:
Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right.
I removed the last part of the quote, because I kinda want to hear from him what he would do differently. He is my editor after all.
I will say creating an index by hand is the biggest ball ache ever. Pages has to automate this process in a future update!
That is annoying. There is a flaw in my book at the moment. No old style numerals. No idea how I totally missed this, but Pages on iOS does not allow you to choose these, which is very annoying. They came so damn close. Plan B is to see if it is possible to do this on the Mac version before bringing it back into iOS.
It took a while but I finally reached an understanding of how to go about the self-publishing route. The truth of the matter is that one size definitely does not fit all. In this case my strategy seems like it will be split across 5 separate channels. What I also didn’t anticipate is the fact that the order in which each one is put online also plays an important role in all of this.
First and most importantly is to get your very own ISBN. Handily leaving in Denmark you are given the first 10 ISBNs for free. Not sure what happens after that (I think you just have to ask for more. For those looking to go down this wild route, here are a few key points that I have settled on:
Each channel has a very distinct strength. None of them are ideal, but the beauty of it all is that they exist and someone with an idea and an iPad can put together their ideas into this world and offer it in a number of ways. My view is that I will begin to offer each of these distribution options in the sequence above. Launching them all on the same day is not possible but I don’t think it matters either as the work itself is not particularly topical, rather can be read now or in 5 years time.
I have been using Pages for iOS for the last year putting together several books and documents. In a word it been a revalation. Incredibly solid application that continues to put a smile on my face as I continue to use and be delighted by it. Working between my iPad and iPhone is seemless. From my part, I am extremely thankful to have such an application at my literal fingertips that has allowed me to create the book that I wanted. This first book is certainly not the last book that I intend to create using this application.
This year has brought a slew of additional features which have been incredibly welcome. In my mind there is only one major feature that is surprisingly missing from such a complete package and that is the ability of creating an index. Sure you can create a table of contents automatically. You can style it to your hearts content, but the ability of highlighting a number of index points that get captured later is missing unfortunately. I do hope that Apple considers to add this feature - which has been requested across the place since 2009.
Been testing out Descript for editing podcasts. There is a way to do this right and a way not to. Recording and publishing is pretty easy. It’s clear to me that editing is where the hard work lies. Descript is compelling but needs time to develop.
So finally got an upgrade to my Swatch. While I do love that little thing, this watch from Vaer encapsulates what I have been looking for in an everyday watch. Have a longer thing to write (or maybe even talk about) soon. The tldr: its an excellent upgrade to a Timex Expedition.
So I have not had the misfortune of having to rely very much on FedEx for packages and deliveries, but this first attempt has left a great deal to be desired. Their customer support is atrocious. They don’t man the phones, don’t answer email. In fact I had to go via their Twitter account to get someone to respond to me. Truly awful. Best to avoid them if you have the choice.
Today is one day (to the day) that I started working on compiling my first book, the Built Environment Compendium. Timing is pretty incredible really. Without planning, today is also the day I finally completed the work inside the book. The cover is mostly done — there are still some small tweaks needed. There is still much work to be done before I can release it to the world, however that day is fast approaching.
This was a major project which included working out how to use Pages app on the iPad. I have been amazed at the completeness of features that Pages offers. The only missing feature has been creating an index.
He finally went ahead and did one, James Hoffmann on The AeroPress - episode 1 of course.
Great short post by Josh Spector, Simple = Sustainable. I can definitely attest to this ideal. Micro.blog is a prime example of this. While the end result you get from something complicated can be infinitely more deep, it’s not much good if you don’t finish it because you gave up on it.
In the spring of 2020, the world was going through unprecedented upheaval. Many across the world descended and depended heavily on the digital realm. It took a hold of our lives; our mental space was covered by a warm glowing digital blanket. Many of us embraced this new reality as we all tried to get away from the reality happening around us. We looked for escape. Years of conditioning took over, it could never have happened otherwise.
I was certainly not immune to this way of life. My attention was completely hijacked. Enough was enough. I confronted this new numbing reality. I consider how I wanted technology in my life. Rather than letting technology entertain me endlessly, through unlimited steams of content I would control how the digital realm would be allowed into my life. It was a difficult transition. A digital addict needs to step away from the things that have a hold over him.
At first I would leave my phone at home when I went out. I would take a notebook and a pen to try and make sense of the world around me. I looked to reading physical books again. I was transported back a decade, where these computers in our pockets did not exist. This was a slow, steady transition back to a more analogue world. The final piece of the analogue puzzle came when I looked down on my wrist. Empty and bare. I looked again and decided that it was time to finally get back to wearing a watch. That was when I fell face down into the rabbit hole.
100th episode of the Micro Monday podcast is up. Great overview of the short past and hopefully long future of the platform. I agree that getting all the things that currently exist in Micro.blog more refined and faster is the correct focus. The year of refinement.
The part I didn’t completely agree with was the suggestion by Patrick to add a tag into the profile. My site is random. Sure there are plenty of sites with a singular focus, most personal sites however do not fit this limitation. One, two or thirteen tags would not be enough or representative of my site - depends on how granular you want to get really. That is the charm and need of our digital gardens. We can plant anything we want in them.
So how do you make discovery better? That is a difficult one when everyone’s thoughts are so random. I think we need to move away from topics and concentrate our efforts elsewhere. Maybe the reasons to discover anyone should be more about tone than topic. How you quantify this tone is a tricky question to answer. I do think that understanding how often someone publishes is key to this equation as well.
Easter weekend is over. I’m not going to lie, it went by way to quickly for me. I honestly could have done with some more time of resetting. Many of my side projects didn’t get any love, but I guess giving pause to some projects is a good practice to let the subconscious do its thing and let your brain come back fresh to the table.
Considering the insane weather we had today (sunshine, snow, sleet and crazy degrees of rain) decided to sort out my wardrobe. Mostly it wasn’t so bad, but even for a Marie Kondoist such as myself, I managed to find a few items that no longer fit me or were way past their useful date. Begone.
I had this idea nearly a year ago. I tinkered with something on this last year. Today I finally finished my first Concise Guide. Really looking forward to sharing these with everyone.
1st of April ‘jokes’ are such bullshit. The next time you think doing one would be a great idea, it really won’t. It’s bullshit.
Advise for those struggling to write on the web. Written 3 years ago and honestly could have written the exact same thing this morning.
Issue 045 of In Abeyance is out. This issue is about Seismic Design. Also features Vortex Bladeless & Field Notes Brand.
One of the joys about spending a little longer researching and writing each article is that I get to dive in a little deeper. Get to discover a little more. Sometimes I am genuinely surprised by where the journey takes me.
The year of learning continues - at least in so much as I can see what the next thing that I want to learn. Last week I ventured into the world of juggling. While I’m not ready to join the circus yet, I am actually capable of juggling 3 objects, a skill I have wondered about for years. YouTube is an exceptional platform for learning as it connects you to a world of teachers. For juggling I learnt from Taylor Tries.
Next up I’m thinking of diving into learning the piano and maybe teaching Zane as well. The piano is an instrument I gave up on over 25 years ago. I do have some mental scars from my piano teacher but I’m hoping that my current self can overcome these. First is getting a piano, but it seems that the one to go for is either the Yamaha P45 or the Roland FP10.
The March issue of In Abeyance is in the can. Just need to draw the cover, which I have a pretty good idea of what I want it to be. 45 issues in and honestly it is clear that I have really only scratched the surface of what I want to explore, research and write about. The monthly schedule suits me better as it allows me to balance work and family and the other Stet.Build projects I’m working on.
Coffee is so difficult to nail consistently, which is down to the number of variables. It starts off with the type of bean; which country did it come from? How was it roasted; dark or light? How did you grind it; what setting and was it a burr grinder? What kind of water did you use; soft or hard? What temperature was the water exactly when you prepared it? What extraction method did you use; pour over, Aeropress, moka pot, other? What method did you use? How many grams did you use? Stacked and in concert it totally changes the outcome.
Been reading Zane his first proper book. Decided to go for some classics (on account that they are now public domain). Tried The Jungle Book, The Wind in the Willows but what finally stuck and he is following is Treasure Island. Bedtime stories just got a whole lot more exciting.
First day of spring. Also, Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. Also happy Na Ruz to all the Iranians out there. I’ve said it before, this is absolutely the right day to celebrate the start of a new year. Also seems Copenhagen got the message as well and is celebrating with clear blue skies and warmer weather.
It strikes me as odd that we have not considered where things are meant to go after they have served their purpose with us. They don’t necessarily need to be old and broken to have exhausted their usefulness, rather they were important to us at one point that we brought them into our lives and now they are not. Mostly things get discarded and thrown into landfills or burned. From a manufacturer level there should be a clear understanding as to how the story ends for each item we buy.
We all need a system that aims to reduce the noise and clutter that manifests in our lives, be it physical, digital or mental. We all have a great deal on our minds. We have too much stuff. We all need a better system than the one we’re currently using. Fundamentally, the issue with humans is that we are natural hoarders. Although it seems to takes considerably less amount of effort in accumulating as it does to discard. We seem to have more difficulty letting go. To reduce our mental overhead, the journey begins by defining those elements that are essential. This is then followed by carefully assessing what can be considered enough to our overall wellbeing, with as little excess as possible.
Any system seeking to define a universal approach to life is going to fall far short for all people. When it’s too broad it becomes harder to tailor to everyone’s unique situation. I’m a teacher. I’m a father. I’m an Engineer. I’m a mother. The intent in this sporadic series of articles is to try and find a common an implementable school of thought, such that anyone can gain something of use and merit.
Once you are able to see the elements of your life for what they truly are and what they actually mean to you, then you can decide on what to do with them. The challenge with the things that we all collect is that their status in our lives shifts in importance the longer they stay with us. They also shift in importance depending on where in your life they appear. Being able to understand these shifts and react to them is an essential skill that needs to be developed in all of us.
Our lives are complex, with a number of moving parts that are all competing with each other for attention and oftentimes supremacy. As we carry these parts around with us, they occupy physical, conscious or subconscious space. The issue being that each one of these parts contributes overall to our mental overhead. Becoming aware of these parts, then being able to categorise them and place them, first into main categories and then into smaller compartments. Once these categories and their compartments are clearly defined, managing them is the next step. Once you understand the pieces in a defined format, the enormity of the task becomes ever more apparent.
Why is this even important? Why change the way you are doing things? Being able to reduce and understand will give you agency. Agency over the world around you. Agency over your belongings (be they physical, digital or mental) that oftentimes you are beholden to. Many (most?) of us where never give clear direction on how to manage these pieces. They were just given to us and we were tasked with understanding and managing them. They called it experience. They called it life lessons. While much of this is true there has to be a better way. Others have tried in part to address this, but there are flaws in their systems. The flaw is trying to distill everything into something you can hold in the palm of your hand. Something simple. Most importantly something that can reduce your mental overhead. You need sensible defaults.
In the truest spirit of the term, unlocking is in full swing in Denmark. Outside it is snowing, with 8°C and glorious sunshine expected on Sunday. March and April are not my favourite months of the year, but they do signal the change that is coming.
Update: And then in true unlocking fashion, the sun comes out and it is absolutely glorious TODAY. March Madness!
While it may seem that I am on a mission to collect all the iOS text apps, Quick Draft by giddyapp is an excellent addition. This is the spiritual replacement for the Edit app. It links the text across your iCloud account (including your Mac). Has some basic, but elegant, markdown formatting. I’m using it to dump any idea or thought that comes into my head. Surprisingly there is a lot of randomness in the file. Intention is to clean it up at the end of the day into more permanent places.
One of the things that I have learnt much later on in my life is the power of iteration. When I was younger I would look on in wonder at what others had accomplished. What I failed to understand is that by merely starting and allowing yourself the time to iterate and build upon the foundation that you have built will allow you go to get to something infinitely more complex than if you tried to condense the process. Your taste exceeds your skill at this stage. That is ok. Keep at it by iterating often, don’t get frustrated. If you keep at it, one day your skills and taste will meet.
I’m sure this was on Ngoc’s list for a while however by chance I dropped him an email a few days ago asking for the opportunity to use my beloved Merriweather. He said it was coming in the latest iteration of 1writer - which just dropped. One of the new features is being able to pick any of your installed fonts. Oh and he also mentioned that he is hard at work on version 4. Super excited about that.
It took me a lifetime but I finally learnt how to sew a button. Growing up my mother had an incredible hand in sewing. I grew up learning none of these skills.
One of my favourite shirts lost a couple of buttons and I just ignored the whole thing. Certainly not something I am adept at but glad to have gained this skill.
I get it now. Yesterday after having discovered the recently added broadcast feature for Goodnotes, I stumbled across a video about the Craft app. I really wasn’t looking for another note taking app (I promise) — yet I quickly realised where this could fit in perfectly. Research.
The main reason I think this works, is because Craft isn’t a pure text editor. It will happily collect pdfs and images and format links with thumbnails, in a manner that is less bloated than something like Evernote. For years I have tried using Pinboard as a way to collect all my research, but it doesn’t fully fit into my workflow. Having one document which I use to dump things into during a month of writing is a pretty powerful way to collect all these thoughts. Exceptional polish for such a young application and I can certainly see why it has gotten the attention it has. It is different to Obsidian, Roam and that is ok, you cannot have one text editor to rule them all.
The biggest ding against it however is the pricing. At $45/year, the question is whether I feel strongly enough about keeping everything within the app itself. The app makes it easy to export an .md file along with all the attachments. Honestly this limitation might actually be a blessing considering it forces me to keep everything pruned - although I will probably only need to do this around the 10-15 document limit.
All You Need Is 1 rather than 1000. I can totally get behind this type of thinking.
This post from Arun about the Art of the Desk Setup is pretty inspiring. Following this I took a hard look at my desk setup and realised there are wins that I could be making in the short and medium term. While I note that Arun doesn’t have any notebooks or pens on his desk (that would just not fly on my desk), I really love the sheer size of his screen (something I am looking to replicate), the cable management system under his desk is great and digital dock are ideas I hadn’t considered previously.
I will say that Jason Snell’s hunt for the perfect iOS Markdown writing tool is a fools errand. I should know, I have been on this very same hunt for years. The difference is that I have realised that there is no single tool to rule them all. Rather what we are truly blessed with is a incredible ecosystem of applications with their very own strength.
I actually removed Simplenote from my setup and so my text is focused across Drafts (Micro.blog and now Twitter), iA Writer (long form writing) and my Zettelkasten. I do feel there is room for an Obsedian-like application for iOS that caters to the Zettelkasten crowd — 1Writer is great but could be soo much better, except development is seemingly very slow.
Just when I was about to drop Disney+ they go ahead and add Star to the service. I can now catch up on The Walking Dead. Sidenote, that series has some excellent music choices.
The last time I bought a Humble Comics Bundle was years ago. This Moebius & Humanoids bundle looks incredible value.
Issue 044 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out.This issue focuses on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, architectural practice Snøhetta and urban maps.
With this issue I am reverting back to my monthly schedule again in releasing the newsletter. Part of the struggle I have had is that I actually enjoy the researching and writing something that is a little longer form than what the bi-monthly schedule allowed.
I have decided to use Twitter in a different manner than I have previously. The idea is to share links, videos, images of the research that goes into each and every issue, as I am writing the issue. I’ll also be collecting these against a hashtag that is not being widely used. This means that in the future after you have read a specific issue you can jump onto the Twitter hashtag as a companion stream that allows you explore a topic in a different way that my 1500 word essays do.
The tabs group feature for Google Chrome is a total game changer. It was in beta for nearly a year before it became something that I have on my work machine.
Winters in Scandinavia are long affairs. Yesterday was the first signs of unlocking. Today we are truly in this region. On my daily walk, took off my wooly hat and even my parka is now starting to be a little overkill for what is happening outside. Let the good times roll. Can’t wait to get the kids prepared for a fun spring hopefully with tons of parks, sunshine and hopefully even some beaches.
Finally finished red marking my copy of the BEC Vol.1. This is the first step before I submit it to my editor. Its taken me roughly 2½ years to get to this stage and on course to being released sometime in May — roughly 3 years after I had the idea. All that is to say, things that are worthwhile sometimes take a good long time to come together.
One more week of winter and you can start to see the first signs of unlocking. The birds have retuned and have begun their chirping and nest building. Magic.
Although not always discussed but my favourite piece of software this year has been the Merriweather typeface.
Easily my favourite live open source typographic projects on the net.
Since around November I have not really been following my no s-diet in the evenings. Breakfast and lunch go by without a hitch. No pangs for snacks. No craving for seconds.
Where it all goes to pot is in the evening. A combination of tiredness and late dinners means the no s-diet is all but a distant memory. So I need to make it easier for me to stick to the plan. Fill up a plate and be done with it.
Yesterday I was reminded just how powerful Drafts is as an app on any platform. My only criticism is the fact that I can just connect it to a folder with a bunch of md files. What it does however it does exceptionally well - using it to post to my site and my Twitter. Totally seamless.
New album by Steven Wilson, The Future Bites. February just got a little better.
When I first landed in Copenhagen a little over a year ago and stepped outside for the first time, the Nordic cold hitting my face I instantly thought, ‘What. Have. I. Done.’ The year that followed was cold, sure but nothing too crazy. Fast forward to this year and it is unbelievably cold. Minus degrees being the norm and short daily walks being slightly unpleasant. Good thing winter is nearly over and we enter unlocking soon.
I know this site is turning into a food log at the moment but when you dare to experiment and create, you should celebrate these small wins. My hand at some udon noodle soup.
I have struggled mightily with working out how best to use Twitter. It is a tool with infinite connections. The main issue is that it has never clicked with me. I struggle with finding people to follow and what to post on a regular basis.
The reason I keep coming back to the platform is down to reach. Now in my second year of publishing my newsletter, it has expanded considerably since those initial steps, but it is a long journey.
I keep coming back to this quote from Seth Godin:
Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. Marketing helps others become who they seek to become.
What problem am I trying to solve? Trying to help people understand the built environment and what we are doing to destroy or protect our planet by way of construction, architecture and policy.
Garlic Lemon Chicken Greek style. I have Akis to thank for this. Just reminded me of what was always readily available around me growing up. If you want to get excited about cooking Greek food, highly recommend his channel (although he does sometimes go heavy on the olive oil).
Affinity 1.9. Arguably one of the best videos for a point release of an indie app. Love the music. The versatility of the functions on offer is incredibly impressive.
You’re sitting in the back of a tiny Fiat Cinquecento. Your then best bud in the back with you. Its been a long journey from the mountains having spent easter with the family. You have the radio on and then the song starts. It’s Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, in many way the song of my teenage years (along with Bullets with Butterfly wings). The word stops and even though you have heard this song what feels like a million times, the timing, the joy of the moment, the sun outside, it breaks the barrier and you find yourselves singing it. Feeling it. 25 years later, every time I hear this song, I am transported. The power of a single song is incredible given time and life.
Super indepth analysis of running a Successful Membership / Subscription Program, by Craig Mod. One of my biggest takes was the fact that he was running his newsletter for 6 years before he started this endeavour. 6 years is a long time. If you don’t have that kind of patience, then try your hand at something else.
Issue 043 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This issue considers carbon capture and sequestration.
This issue was surprisingly easier to write than a lot of them in the recent past. I attribute it to the fact that Having decided what I want to write about throughout the year means that I get a bit of time to let the ideas develop.
I always knew there was an entire universe surrounding coffee. A bunch of coffee nerds talking about grind, water quality, grams per litre, percolation, pour over. You needed to have all the gear to make something half decent. You needed beans (sustainably sourced) from Guatemala. And on and on.
Honestly, you can go as deep as you want, like with anything attached to any industry. I’ve had a reasonably varied relationship with my coffee. This year however is when I take it up a little notch. No, not going to be buying an espresso machine any time soon, but will be building my coffee making collection purposefully.
I have been using the v60 almost exclusively over the last year to make pour over filter coffee. The first enhancement has been the introduction of a small kitchen scale and a Bodum milk frother. Its a surprising purchase that actually makes a decent milky based coffee at home. I am going to be (re)buying an Aeropress next (I lost the filter a while back and never bothered to replace it). One of the coffee nerds guiding me on this journey is James Hoffmann. Definitely recommend his videos on the subject. Suitably snooty about what he is doing, but actually comes from a factual and scientific angle.
📚 The Spy Who came in from the Cold by John Le Carré is the first book of 2021. Excellent novel, certainly worthy of your attention. Recommendation came from Ben Rhodes on the Pod Save The World podcast. I guess I totally missed this but Le Carré died a little over a month ago. Fitting tribute by reading the mans best. Although thinking about reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy next.
Also what are all the late night hosts going to talk about every day? Seriously. I think I just got back roughly 3 hours of my life per week back…I predict total boredom from them. Man I hope Biden is one boring ass president. Just put your head down dude and do the work.
I think I just fell in love with Amanda Gorman. What a great poem and a great delivery and only 22 years old?!
Also not to get superficial here, but the yellow coat and red head band were completely on point. Talk about upstaging both JLo and Gaga. Wonderful.
Been looking for some easy wins for the morning. These five overnight oats recipes have been a real winner for me. The trick to overnight oats it seems is making sure that you put the same amount of oats to liquid and then add half as much yogurt. The end result has been awesomely smooth and creamy. I have previously been eyeballing it. Big mistake. Getting the measurements right is actually super important.
Last one for today. Incredible poem. Good Bones by Maggie Smith - Poetry Foundation. Definitely listen to the audio by Smith. From the Erasable Podcast.
Time seriously flies by. Today marks three (!) years on Micro.blog. The last year being the most I have posted to any website ever within a year. 1700 posts later, I absolutely love the service that has gone from strength to strength. My interaction changed from the middle of last year, but that was part of a digital detox that I have maintained (after a fashion). I certain miss some of the interactions, but for the time being this distance works for me a little. Maybe this year I bring back some of the interactions back, in a controlled way.
As is customary for me, my yearly pitch about the excellence of Micro.blog. I’ll use one of my favourite quotes:
“You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”
— Seneca
As far as Micro.blog is concerned, it gives you what is essential and then what is enough.
The first issue In Abeyance for 2021 is now out. Issue 042 is now out. The issue looks ferrock, Neom’s The Line, ACME Studio’s architecture line and more. I also spent some time updating the design of the email slightly. As always you can sign up here.
Hasta la Vista, America: Trump’s Farewell Address. A deranged finale for a deranged era. 99 cents. Cheap.
Naturally, living in the upper northern hemisphere, the winter offers a unique challenge for us. Grey skies. Cold weather. Limited sunlight. The middle of January is starting to feel like we are slowly creeping away from the exceedingly long nights. Sure there is much better days to come, but at least you can see light by 7:30am and there is still light after 4:30pm. Its funny how you can take a lot for granted until it is taken away from you. Equally, experiencing all four seasons has been spectacular. Can’t have it all.
First chocolate chip cookies. These things turned out perfect. Crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.
On a personal level, nothing that happens in American politics has any direct effect on my life. Not really. It’s no different than what happens in Australian or Russian politics. In fact what happens in Belgium or Germany is likely more important to my life and I certainly don’t pay them any attention.
I have a bipolar relationship with America. I consume a lot of culture that is produced there (from books, to shows, to music, to software, to electronics). I mean the ultimate endorsement is that my wife is half American. Yet I certainly don’t believe in the rhetoric and I can see many of the social issues that the country has to manage (systemic racism, rampant gun control, undemocratic electoral system, etc).
One of the best books I’ve read about America’s future is called Fall of the Empire. Its not talking about the British one, that fell long ago. No this was published over a decade ago by the same guy how predicted the fall of the USSR, then at the peak of its power and the reasons why, back in the 70s. In this book he described the reasons for the fall of the American Empire. Many of the topics he covers were played out yesterday.
So why am I glued to watching what is happening? Part of it might be that its a well documented car crash. This week has shown just how much of a sham the whole system is. Sure you might argue that the system will get rid of the bad players eventually, proof that there are some checks and balances. The thing is I want to try and remember when an angry mob stormed another parliament building in a first world country? Seriously. The fact that it got this far shows how poor the system in place is. Hell, even countries like Lebanon, with governments soo incompetent they kept a nuclear bomb in the center of the city for over 10 years, is able to control it’s population from entering the parliament building.
More broadly however I think from an early age I realised that the American machine touched many of our lives but in an indirect way. Democracy is in decline. I am someone raised in a democracy and enjoy the freedoms that comes with that. I certainly don’t want to swear allegiance to any ‘dear leader’ nor do I want to operate under the watchful eye of a ‘party’, communist or otherwise. I believe in democracy.
I know its only snow, but can’t help be feel super excited about this development. I have not seen real snow in so long and it feels like we have the full seasons in Denmark, something so simple that I had almost forgotten what it felt like.
We have been in Scandinavia for a little over a year now. Today is the first day that my kids finally see snow.
Sometime last year I fell out of love with science fiction. I know anathema! The truth is that maybe after decades of being a real lover of the genre I just need a break to immerse myself in something else. I have two books lined up and I can’t get through them for some reason.
Meanwhile I am getting into Less, a pulitzer prize winning romantic comedy about a 50 year old gay man. The last pulitzer prize winner I read was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, which is one of my favourite books of all time, so no pressure Less.
Maybe its because 2020 was such a basket case of a year that the Danes have saw sense but I feel that they are not going as batshit crazy with the fireworks as they did last year. Last year truly was exceptional and relentless. Hopefully I’m not jinxing anything but I’m pretty sure this time last year I was already over new years celebrations and had vowed never to be in Denmark during the turn of the year.
Having released a number of projects in 2019 (it was after all the year of release), the focus of 2020 was the year of consolidation. The intent was to focus my mind on these projects and make them better - implicit was the fact that I was not to add any new projects.
What I didn’t expect was that in 2020, I would also start my personal learning journey.
For 2021, the year of learning I want more of the above. I’m not sure what exactly I want to learn specifically, but I know that I really have enjoyed the process of getting better personally at certain things and understanding the reasons why.
The last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind for my newsletter. I felt like I was not giving myself the necessary time to let ideas percolate. Rather once I had settled on the idea, the writing process felt a little hurried.
Following on from the release of the latest issue, I sat down and mapped out all of next year’s issues, at least in principal. Surprisingly I am only revisiting 5 topics discussed in the previous 2 volumes. I think it is important that I review some of these topics from time to time if I feel that there is more to discuss. I’m sure new and wonderful ideas will bubble up throughout the year but in this way I hope to have a place to throw ideas and links into the document over a period of time. Takes a little bit of the friction from starting to write an idea.
For 2½ years I have been working on Stet.Build. It has been some of the most enjoyable work I have done in that time and aim to continue writing it for years to come. Lately I have started to wonder why it isn’t receiving traction with more readers.
The truth is I have tried a few things on LinkedIn but Twitter is where those most likely to engage with the articles hang out online. I have never had a good relationship with the platform but I have recognised that it is what it is. So I will be spending the next few months trying to build over there. What I will be posting over there is considerably different to what I post here on my site. It has been an interesting few days and my mind is switching into this mode a little bit.
There is actually a lot of excellent information and people posting on there in the science ans engineering sphere. Already got two new ideas for future articles and I’ve only been on there for a few days. The main issue is that the information is desperately dispersed. Building up my lists of accoubts to follow has been the hardest part of this process - my reasoning is that once this is set it will be a matter of managing and pruning.
Diving into print on demand publishing, ISBN numbers, Ingramspark, KDP, Lulu and everything in between has been overwhelming.
Selling something online is very easy. The fact that there are options available to tap into all these markets is amazing. Going digital is the smart way to go.
My main issue however is that I have gotten properly excited about the physical object in front of me. I’d like to offer this option to others but not sure the smartest route. Ingramspark can get you into the building, if you take some risk (offer a high discount and allow returns). Lulu royalties make the exercise nearly worthless (0.79 cents for a $15 is a joke). Not a real fan of any of these options.
Following on my original statement about print quality from Lulu, I can confirm that the overall quality of the trade books with the high quality paper is truly excellent.
I printed the book both with the higher end printing process and the standard printing process and found the difference unnoticeable. I had to go check that I had indeed ordered two different books. I think for something like the BEC, the standard printing is going to be an excellent option that has a good balance between the cost and quality.
The only element that I wish was available is having french flaps - although don’t think that many POD services offer this option. The soft matt cover however is excellent. If you have any hesitation about going down the Lulu printing for this type of book, put those worries to ease.
First copy of the Built Environment Compendium Vol.1. 2 ½ years in the making.
I’m still mulling over the quality of the printing (via Lulu). The cover colours didn’t come out anywhere near what I am looking for but still a physical thing in this world is always a good time.
Spent the entire day building the kids first bunk beds. Mammoth undertaking (took me about 6 hours when all was said). However for the first time since we started having kids (over 6 years) I thought that our bed was finally ours again…except the little one has different ideas entirely.
This is going to take a little time I see to get him to start his night off in his bed and hopefully stay there.
Certainly not a protectionist view (I’ve never been to Estonia) and I feel patriotic for the nation that has accepted me during that period of my life, but it is nice to see anything other than the ‘Made in China’ stamp.
I’ve been looking around me and have realised that overall there seems to be an accumulation of stuff and cruft. Minimalism this is not. Marie Kondo would not be very happy. This Christmas break I fully intend to do a proper clear out of everything that does not contribute and is no longer used. Then make a list of all the things that we actually definitely need in the future.
2021 is already looking better than this bitch of a year. Then you have season 3 of Cobra Kai as the cherry on top.
So we are not able to go to a bar, so we had the bar sent to us. Great evening of making 3 cocktails and I have all the gear to do more in the future! Now just need to get that alcohol smell from my desk….
Issue 040 of my email newsletter, In Abeyance is now out.
Always feels good to get an issue done. Most times I have no idea what I am going to write about until a week before it needs to go out and there is some frantic searching and banging my head against the wall for a few days. I might even get a little grumpy. This is the 23rd issue of the year and what a year it has been. Next issue is the last for the year.
From my introduction:
As a child one of my deepest fears was that of loosing my eyesight. Something about living such a life filled me first with sorrow and dread. With age that point of view transformed into admiration and respect. Throughout my life I have not had any real interaction with anyone that is visually impaired or blind. One of the only real interaction that I have had is those elements present in the built environment meant to cater to the blind. These elements have become more noticeable to me since moving to Copenhagen last year and were the clear inspiration for this week’s issue.
If you are curious about the built environment I urge you to sign up, best email on the subject you will get roughly published every two weeks — I’m trying to resolve my publishing schedule so that I can get rid of the roughly part of that sentence.
I’ve been looking for a Fracture equivalent in Europe and stumbled onto this Finnish company Beyondprint. Have so many ideas that I want to start putting on the walls. Definitely a project for 2021.
This post from Derek Sivers captures how I feel about arbitrary celebration dates. When did my year begin? Around May time when things started kicking off at work properly and I read Digital Minimalism that allowed me to regain my attention which was hijacked by the internet. I fall back into some old habits on occasion, but this is definitely less common these days than a year ago.
I honestly didn’t know that this was missing from my life, Korean-style egg sandwich with cheese and jam. Whhhaaaatt? It really works. Sunday mornings got transformed a little.
This is now becoming a bit of a tradition on this site. During the month of November I will take my hand at a little bit of short fiction that I make up on a daily basis. This breaks every rule I have for writing. Not knowing what the story is ultimately about and where it is heading is both scary and foreign to me - which is why I insist on doing it. It puts my brain in a mode that I am not used to. It stretches it.
This year was exceptionally hard for me. I came close to giving up a few times around the half way mark which I think is the hardest part of the story. The first 10 instalments are about building the world, the middle 10 instalments are about giving the characters something to do. The last 10 instalments are about bringing it all together.
The prompts are interesting for me in that they help get things kicked off at the start. Even though they are a single word in 50 they do play an important role. When I know where the story is meant to be heading is when I drop them. This year I used them all the way up to day 25 (shows how completely lost I felt this year).
The final story (and title) will be published next week after I have had a few days to let it all sink in. I can get the editing machete to the whole body of text, fine tuning and pruning it into something more coherent. What’s currently published on the site is the first draft. We all know that mostly these are…raw.
Plan is now to go back to writing about randomness that I have actually missed this last month and a half.
30 of 30
As I stared outside I wondered how many others had made the switch back. Was I alone in the world? The communicator remained silent for what seemed like forever. I tried to add to the silence. I tried again and again. Then after trying for what seemed like an eternity, ever so faintly, apprehensively even, I heard the words, ‘Hello. World?’
29 of 30
I switched back. Silence. Inside the alert module was not exploding around me, the communications were not responding. Outside was even more disconcerting. Rather than the regular barrage I was greeted with a soft glow from the horizon. For the first time in centuries a human being could see the sun rising.
Yesterday we put up the Christmas tree. Yasmine tells me to get a smaller tree. So that is what I tried to do. I even convinced myself that this was the case throughout the trip carrying the thing back to the house. Turns out the tree is pretty much the exact same size as last year.
Aside: Last year I remember I had to stop multiple times along the journey. Not so much this year, didn’t actually stop at all . Was it because I have lost weight this year and therefore the same tasks seem much easier?
28 of 30
Humanity had reached its zenith and had succeeded in destroying itself. We couldn’t talk, plead or engineer ourselves out of the situation. In these moments our imagination and creativity did not count for much. As the most destructive species on the planet it was hardly a surprise that our final act would be unto ourselves.
27 of 30
At first the plan looked to be working. For a brief moment in time, humanity had the better of it deepest darkest impulses, our most vile desires, our struggle with the worst we had to offer was being conquered. Our joy was short lived and in what seemed like an instant, we were overwhelmed.
This years short story has been an interesting exercise of something not quiet going my way, until I remembered what made last year’s attempt work for me. This year I was focusing on the individual 50 word instalments. Last year I was writing the story in one big file. I would go back and modify, tweak, edit. With four more instalments to go, I went back and did a number of heavy edits to the story.
I don’t ever intend to participate in Nanowrimo, however this single-1500-word-story-per-year exercises a writing muscle I don’t typically get to use very often. While the process can be frustrating at times (I still have no idea how the story is going to end on Monday), coming up with the actual story, building on it and trying to stick the landing is worth trying once a year.
26 of 30
What we also noticed was that after someone did manage to return from the Spectrum, this came with an extended period of tranquility. By sending everyone into the Spectrum at once the hope was that this would overwhelm the system and allow as many to return as possible.
The fall set of wallpapers by the Icon Factory is both amazing and free.
25 of 30 / Call
Generations were lost in our pursuit of finding a way to stopping a our own subconscious from killing us off in the real world. The numbers kept going down and nothing was working. We eventually stumbled on a possible solution. We would answer the call, en masse.
24 of 30 / Provision
To discover the thing that hunts you is also a part of you was existential crisis. We doubted everything that humanity stood for. Why were we trying to kill ourselves? More importantly how could we stop?
23 of 30 / Capture
An idea can be forgotten, remembered, captured, buried but never destroyed. We realised that the frequency invaders were nothing more than manifestations of our own subconscious. All this time we had been in battle with ourselves. Or at least part of ourselves.
22 of 30
We had sent multiple skyminders into the Spectrum before. What made this time different was the stakes and the scale. This move was putting all of human existence on the line. Based on a simple hypothesis. I was sent in first.
Issue 039 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, The Shinkansen. This is one of those topics that practically wrote itself. I could have easily written two or three times as much. An incredibly rich topic and one I hope to expand upon in the future.
21 of 30 / Winter
‘We are deep in humanity’s longest and maybe last winter. We’ve been here before, maybe a thousand times over. I’ve lost count. We have sacrificed nearly everything we have. This is my account of our very last attack and how we survived.’
Since I read Digital Minimalism earlier this year, I have been on a bit of a journey into more purposeful productivity methods, which can be attributed to a couple of reasons - the work itself and the place of work.
I have been listening to Cal Newport talk about Time Blocking for months now, but not really been able to implement it because there was another piece of the puzzle that was not available to me, the configure part of his method. This week I was finally able to find the solution to the configure section of things.
He would alway suggest using Trello and I did honestly try a couple of times. Turns out the man is very smart but his blind spot is Trello (we all have one). This overtly complicated software with fiddly (and silly) options, themes, templates, bloat. Just terrible advice really.
Two apps that work together to complete the configure circle. While it may seem limited at first, the free Basecamp Tier is incredibly versatile, because you can have an infinite amount of individually named todo lists.
Basecamp gives you three ‘projects’. I would offer you to think of these as contexts instead. I have three contexts:
Within each context I then have multiple projects, each with its own todo list. What is great about the Todo lists for Basecamp is that each todo list can have a general discussion attached to it, each item can have a general discussion attached to it. I can add files if I want, but I tend not to (usually adding links to files instead).
Under personal I have also added categories such as housework, to get a general feel for how much time I actually spend on household tasks. Eventually I will also add how much time I spend on walking, reading and writing.
At work the external context gets the most action, however increasingly more time is spent elsewhere. I needed an ever more accurate way of tracking the plethora of channels so that I don’t context switch and keep that to a minimum. I think I finally found it as long as the free tiers remain.
20 of 30 / Fade
While she had faded from existence, her presences would be known in this place. The best way to disrupt any frequency is to create the right circumstances that lead to interference. Luciana didn’t loose any time getting to work. Even though she didn’t understand the why, she was a soldier and a good soldier always follows orders.
19 of 30 / Possible
The Spectrum was a hard concept for humans to conceive of such a place, like infinity. It did not resemble the physical. Here linear thought was not possible and your very existence was a very different experience. You became your thoughts, wrapped in your ideas. Endlessly.
18 of 30 / Dependence
‘Always remember that you have nothing to fear. Your dependence has been untethered. A million souls. All of what is left of humanity is behind you in these moments.’ The Admiral passed Luciana a golden glass filled to the top.
Luciana stood on the edge of forever and at once ceased to exist in both the real and subconscious human worlds.
In case you missed this, but iA announced they are releasing a new app
Companies, like us, that are working on a brand new app, will think about founding another corporation to avoid the one million threshold and lose out on integrating the two apps together. User experience suffers as a result.
Then in this conversation, over at capiche.fm, Oliver Reichenstein confirms that they have been working on this for years and it goes into beta in a month — super excited about that. Then he confirmed that they are going to be releasing that physical product mentioned for their 10th birthday. Good day for us iA fanboys.
17 of 30 / Train
Luciana peered at the glasses of golden liquid.
‘Time. What we need is time. We are sending you into the heartland of the Frequencies. Your mission is simple, unleash chaos. There is just one thing, once the train has left the station, there is no turning back. The trip is one way.'
16 of 30 / Memory
‘Your memory might be young, Lieutenant Luciana, but your actions mask the fact that you are the most prolific skyminder we have ever had. Humanity is tired Luciana. Over the decades we have tried to break free of the endless cycle.’ The Admiral paused and looked intently at Luciana.
It’s been 2 weeks of writing my story in roughly 50 word chunks. This is part of the Micro.blog November challenge. I decided last year to combine this challenge and NaNoWriMo into one, which yielded a short story called The Mark. What I liked about the exercise is that it had very low stakes and expectations. Sometimes it’s all about the journey and not the destination.
15 of 30 / Far
‘The decision to put the fate of humanity in the hands of our children was not taken lightly. It was universally agreed that although far from ideal, this situation would be accepted as a temporary one. Weeks turned to months, then years, then decades. We have been fighting the Frequency Invaders across generations with no clear way out. Until now.’
14 of 30
‘At first we had no line of defence for what was happening to us. You have to know what you are up against before you can counter attack. It didn’t take us long to realise that one particular demographic was immune, children that had not yet turned to adults.’
13 of 30 / Guess
‘You just had your fourteenth birthday is that not right?’ asked the old lady. ‘I did…Admiral’ replied Luciana. ‘Well then, I guess you are clear to join me for a drink.’ The Admiral paused, let a small smile escape her and proceeded to pour a rich golden liquid into the two glasses. ‘It’s time you understood your role in this world soldier.’
12 of 30 / Wear
On the table was a decanter and two large wine glasses. Luciana took her seat at the table. ‘15 years old’, began the old lady ‘is that the average life expectancy of a skyminder. Do you know why?’ Luciana did not attempt a guess. ‘Because those that wear the uniform fail to understand the significance of the subconscious.’
Currently listening to Simple Song by The Shins. Song of the autumn for me.
11 of 30 / Say
The eyes belonged to an old lady who was looking down with focused intention. She wore a sharp two piece navy blue skirt and jacket. The only tell that she was military was a sharp silver pin under her left shoulder. ‘Sorry about the abrupt interuption, we have much to get through.’ Luciana slowly managed to get to her feet, before she could say anything they were both inside a large empty tent with a round table and two chairs in the center.
10 of 30 / Elderly
This was not normal. In the puzzling you were the hunter. Nothing was meant to land an attack. Yet here she found herself lying on the floor, the wind completely knocked out of her. She turned over onto her back and looked straight up. Staring down at her were a pair of elderly eyes.
My coffee has been weak sauce for about 2 weeks now. I chalked this up to the coffee beans themselves. Nope. Turns out my handground setting was on 8 (coarse) when it usually is at 3. Incredible how fiddly a simple cup of coffee can be. In other news, my other fiddly piece of coffee gear from Kickstarter doesn’t arrive until May/June of next year which is a major bummer.
Actually excited for the announcements later on today from Apple. It’s been a little over a year without a MacBook (the first time in over a decade). At the time I didn’t buy a replacement because of the keyboard issue. Then they announced that Apple silicon was coming this year, so I decided to hold out a little bit longer.
Speaking to my guy in the know he rightly predicted that a November ‘present’ would be coming. 16” and 13” MacBook Pro first, followed by the Air. His other prediction was that the new lineup will be slightly cheaper than the current lineup of MacBooks.
9 of 30 / Force
The puzzling was distinct in that you were always doing the chasing. This was a direct contrast to the realities of being a skyminder. This mental construct also served as a training ground, to help you anticipate how a chaser moves, thinks and reacts. Luciana was bounding through a city made of infinitely routes across seemingly infinite levels. In an instant she found herself knocked to the ground by an impossible force.
Issue 038 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This one covers one of my favourite architectural and art movements, the Art Nouveau.
8 of 30 / Bind
Luciana’s subconscious switched back without missing a beat. Here she was running at the speed of thought. Here she was not under attack. Here there was nothing to bind her. Here she was not in constant danger. Here she was not a crucial link in the world’s defence. Here she was allowed to smile.
Wonderful bike ride across Copenhagen this morning. Sun was shining. Temperature was like Goldilock’s porridge (not too cold, not too warm). Lots of awesome black and white photos coming to wrap up my month of posting photos.
7 of 30 / Inflate
The human subconscious needs to be fed challenges. It is what keeps the brain from imploding in on itself. The puzzling was created to offer just the right level of engagement. A near infinite maze of challenges to explore and discover. The levels of complexity continuously inflate as more time is spent wandering the conjured worlds. Some skyminders have spent their entire lives between these two states of being.
6 of 30 / Puzzling
It was established early on, that while the body and brain can be put in a successful suspended animation, the subconscious required a different kind of solution. Trying to pause this activity meant breaking something that could not be fixed. Our answer to this was the puzzling.
5 of 30 / Stoop
In the suspended state your mind wanders; meanders. While your physical body floats in the air, suspended on an invisible stoop. Everything lingers. Your breathing slows down and is barely perceptible. Your eyes glaze a milky white. Your skin hardens and goes cold. Your heart is barely felt. Your subconscious however is in complete overdrive.
4 of 30 / Near
This particular attack was devastating in scale. Reaction was led by instinct, if you waited too long the game was over. In this heightened state, Luciana was in a form of trance. Her body being stressed to near breaking, yet for the casual observer it seemed effortless. She managed to fend them all. Then almost instantly she switched off again.
Robert Fisk dies at 74. I saw him speak in Beirut with my brother 10 years ago. His work will live on after him.
I’ve not felt this anxious about an American election since 2008. I remember waking up in the middle of the night in my flat in London and just being happy that the right choice was made. Then you guys follow that up and elect someone that was ostensibly worse that George W. Bush - and by all accounts he was the worst. Get this right ‘merica. Seriously.
3 of 30 / Astonish
The exact nature of the attack was never the same. It just happened and it was always relentless. The onslaught reached critical. Luciana switched. Instinct kicked in, her movements were fluid, almost rehearsed and yet completely new. Her deftness however would astonish even the most veteran of skyminders.
Hard to imagine but this is the first physical book I have bought this year, having made my transition to digital for most of my reading.
2 of 30 / Concentrate
We quickly learned that being in this state quickly brings about exhaustion. While the human brain was never designed to concentrate at this level in perpetuity, it does have an incredible way of adapting. Turns out all you need to keep things moving along are the fleeting moments inbetween. From an early age we are all taught to turn on and off, like a switch.
1 of 30 / Dreary
Although confined to an aerial bunker, there was an ever present view of the world outside. Seasons had long since disappeared, replaced instead by an endless cornucopia of states. Each state brought with it a different colour to the sky. No longer confined to vibrant blues or dreary grey skies, the world now offered an always changing spectrum. There might have been a time when this display might have even been considered beautiful to behold. Instead this change meant a constant state of alert.
Today I went to the supermarket briefly. Its not the major weekly shop, as we get that delivered to the house, rather this is for quick essentials we’ve run out of.
For the first time since this pandemic began I felt safe as a new sign was put on the door for everyone entering to wear a mask. When we are all doing it it just feels like we are helping keep each other safe. It is a simple precaution.
Is it annoying? Absolutely. Does it matter? Absolutely.
This Is the Coronavirus Election. Gruber doesn’t often write longer posts anymore, except when he reviews iPhones, but when he does, he always sticks the landing.
After about 5 months of getting The Economist every week, I’ve decided to put a pause on my subscription while I take a breather, read some books and disconnect from the news cycle a little bit.
The new text only NPR website is pretty timely. This can be a place I drop in once a day take a look whats going on and then move on with my day.
Ok that was unexpected. Went to pick up my iPad and they couldn’t fix it and just replaced the whole thing. Man that AppleCare+ came in handy! Also didn’t have to pay a thing. Customer service is a beautiful thing when it works.
Earlier this year I semi stepped away from the Micro.blog community. It certainly wasn’t anything the community did to me. The truth is I enjoyed many of the interactions and the people I ‘met’ on the platform. The problem was that I didn’t like how I was using the service as a crutch for boredom.
This is a service that doesn’t really gain much from me constantly checking it. There are no advertisers involved, and yet I found myself checking the feed. Maybe it was a muscle memory, built across a decade that will be hard to break after a few short months? So as part of my digital detox I cut everything out.
A little while later I thought I could be an adult about this and decided to try and introduce it back into my life. Sadly, I found I was falling into the same trap as before.
I love the service for my hosting and the near limitless ways of publishing. It works perfectly for me. In fact this year I am going the full premium. I don’t like it for reading. So what to do? I created a new tag in Feedbin. Slowly I am pushing everyone’s feeds in there and now i have a dedicated place that I can go and access in a more purposeful manner.
What is missing is the interaction. I wish there was a way to interact with these posts directly from Feedbin, or at least be able to go to the site and somehow leave a comment. My comments made to a post in Micro.blog is then displayed on a persons website. I don’t know what the easy way to leave a comment on a persons website is.
Issue 037 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out now, Enviromental Graphic Design.
I did something a little different with the newsletter this month. Typically I ensure that there are a few images sprinkled throughout the issue. This time I decided to go text only — except for the cover. I want to see if this has any demonstrable impact on people’s engagement with the newsletter itself. Nearly 2 years into this newsletter and I continue to experiment with the exact form it should take.
Nutmeg. Red leaves. Colder weather. Longer nights. Gloves. Falling leaves. Rainy days. Mugs of coffee. Scarves. Brisk autumn walks. Pumpkin pie. Scary ghosts. Orange leaves. Witches. Warm jumpers. Woolly socks. Apple pie. Hot tea. Cinnamon buns. Warm blankets.
Had to take my iPad Pro to the shop. I couldn’t take the battery drain any more.
Realising that this could take several days, I had to make sure that the cover to next week’s issue was done.
Now is as good a time as any to sign up to the best (totally objective opinion) newsletter about the built environment.
Got an awesome email this morning from my ISP. They’ve bumped our internet speed from 50Mbit/s to 300Mbit/s. Wonder how long this post will take to age?
Saw this in my RSS feed this morning and I am in the ‘Neutral Good’ category. However I might look into ‘True Neutral’. One file for the draft. One file for the research. One folder for anything I collect on the subject.
So annoyed. I really wanted to finally buy a new Kindle after using my current one for the last 7 years, however get to the final part of the checkout and for some bizarre reason it does not ship the damn thing from either Germany or the UK. Madness and stupidity. Because Denmark?!
Spent some time sorting out through my various text editors and how I want to organise my typed words. Taking inspiration from the system for my notebook, once again I realised that a single app for all the different threads and channels is foolish. By dedicating an app for a specific task, you are signaling to yourself that this is what I want to get done right now. This is where this type of work lives. Also different apps have different strengths - play to their strengths.
This is where all my blogging happens. The direct publishing to Micro.blog is exactly what I want. I open the app and can get writing straight away. If I want to have something with a title, it’s also there. No constraints or worrying about length. Just type and publish.
I set this up with two specific managed workspaces. Default is unpublished and therefore publishing ideas. The second is just an archive of everything that I have written and published.
This is where the projects live. I have synced this up with iCloud. I have individual folders for each project and so when its time to work on any on project I know where to go.
Finally this all clicked for me. This is my second brain. Using the Zettlekasten method, I am able to start collecting and writing information knowing that it is a single folder of text files. Lives on Dropbox and honestly I can’t wait to have hundreds of thousands of notes in there. The more the better as long as they are tagged and interlinked with each other
I decided to also add Simplenote to the mix. This is really just a place to brain dump. Sometimes I like to work something out. It doesn’t really fit into any of the above modes. Sometimes its clearing out junk from my head, when I don’t want to write things down, I want to type them out. Its not a major part of my routine, but I have found that these random text files find their way into different places. Why not create a dedicated space for this. I have called this my Brain Cleanser.
You write. You draw.
As you move your hand, the lines start running.
With the running lines, our mind sprint.
Handwriting means letting your mind take off.
— Hobonichi Techi 2021 packaging
Its taken a really long time but I have finally settled on my physical notebook situation that I use on a regular basis. I originally was trying to fit everything into a single book, a Hobonichi. Foolishness. No instead, what I actually needed was 5 distinct notebooks, plus a bunch of little pocket notebooks. Lets unpack that.
I wish I had stumbled across this concept earlier in my life. Keep a sketchbook for exploration. Use one notebook and fill it with all the sketches, rough, finished, try different mediums, give yourself room to explore. What you might find in those pages is your style moving; shifting; growing. A visual playground of your own creation. What’s interesting about this is the first few pages are going to be poor even to your eyes. Don’t feel discouraged. Persevere and you will see yourself slowly but surely getting better.
My notebook of choice for this type of notebook is a blank A5 Midori MD.
Your thoughts are like water.
Now in my 5th year of regular journalling I don’t do this as often as I want (twice a day), but I have been carving some time out every day to go through it. This is your mental dumping ground. This is where you letter your mind write whatever it wants. The paper is not going to judge you. Better for you to write it down than let it float and bounce around your head.
For this, I have settled on the excellent sized B6 Cafe Note from Nanami paper. I’ve got a Gfeller cover that will last me years and years to come.
Turns out the best way to write articles, books or anything is to get it onto paper first. While my online writing can be captured pretty quickly in Drafts or iA Writer, when I want to work something out, the sequence of thoughts and ideas, there is nothing better than paper. For stringing these thoughts into cohesive sentences I go digital, but for working things out, I go analogue.
Although I am currently using some Muji A5 notebooks, I have a massive Seven Seas Nanami notebook waiting to be used just for this purpose. Once my current notebook is finished (probably end of the year), can shift over to the book that will last me a whole lot longer.
For years I employed the bullet journal method to get shit done at work. It was invaluable to me. However one of the issues is we live in an increasingly digital world and there are far to many channels. I found myself breaking the mould and away from some of the basic things that make the system useful (put the date at the top, collection of tasks for a topic, bullets for notes). It was all getting messy again. I also found the A5 notebook wasn’t getting filled out very well.
So I decided to split things a little. I have two A6 notebooks. One dedicated for just notes, ideas, whatever. The other is just to capture all of my actions into individual buckets. Every page is a channel. Whenever a task pops up I put it into one of the channels
My go to are the Hobonichi A6 notebooks. Blank and beautiful. No eccentric Japanese quotes or sketches of foxes or whatever else they have added recently to the Techo. I know this is probably part of the charm, but to be honest, I want that 20% lost paper per page to be mine.
Finally I have been using pocket notebooks for over a decade. These go with me wherever I go. Its a practice that has served me well and even if it’s one note, its one note less bouncing in your head or worse, lost forever. I hate that.
Issue 036 of my newsletter In Abeyance is now out. This issue concentrates on adaptive façade, David Attenborough’s latest documentary, Ørsted, The 99% Invisible City and Signify.
Outlook you are the worst. Sent out the latest issue of my newsletter (post coming) and some of the images have a .jpeg filename. Guess which application doesn’t recognise this filename extension. Shakes fist at the sky!
I finally found a good place for stationary in Scandinavia, the Pen Store out in Stockholm. Ordered a couple of bottles of ink (Iroshizuku Yama-budo and Lamy Topaz), a bunch of refills and a Lamy Safari Mango (to match up with the brown ink). Package arrived within a few days in a gloriously yellow box.
Just finished watching David Attenborough’s A Life On Our Planet. As always the man is a treasure and I hope we heed the advice in the years and decades to come.
One of my many flaws, and one that I have struggled with the most, is my general nature to maintain my stuff like new. Its a character trait that I fully inherited from my mother. We get upset when something gets a scratch, or a tear or a dent. Sadly I see that this trait has been passed onto my eldest. I know how heartbreaking it feels when something you cherish breaks somehow but I also recognise that this is not the way of the world. So when Zane had a moment of recent madness over a tear in one of his drawings, I decided to explain the beauty and acceptance of Wabi-sabi. It helped that I had the perfect prop to explain it to him.
When he couldn’t have been more than a few years old he took a liking to my navy blue Kaweco fountain pen. Coming home one day I saw that he had totally done a number on all the edges as he frantically was trying to use it as marking tool. At the time I was super upset as Kaweco had stopped making pens in this rich blue colour. I now look at the pen and it reminds of a curious 2 year old and all the times it would write all over the house with anything he found. Every ‘flaw’ tells a story which becomes even more important than the object itself. Surprisingly it didn’t take him very long to start looking for wabi-sabi in all his own posessions.
🎨 001 / Doodlober
I’m certainly not partaking in ‘Inktober’ this year (because Jake Parker) but will be participating in Doodlober. I just made it up, you can use it widely and freely.
It’s been a real pleasure seeing the evolution of Micro.blog over these last few years. Slow and purposeful incremental steps in making writing your thoughts to be shared on the web as easy as possible.
Version 2.0, released yesterday brings a lot of new polish to the service apps across platforms. By far my favourite is the web interface upgrade on mobile. Great work @manton
For years I have always thought that a habit tracker is a very powerful motivator. So much so I even designed one for a few years. Then I thought that maybe in a notebook. Then in an app. Then I know online.
Nothing was really working. I would loose interest. So I decided to go very lo-fi. Double page from my Field Notes with 365ish boxes. The single most important task. I might do a bigger one with several smaller tasks and put it on my wall
Ted Lasso has been a great find these last few weeks. Just a really great way of starting the weekend with a beer with 30min of escapism that is warm and fun. Season finale next week will be bittersweet.
Issue 035 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. Leader topic for this week is submerged floating tunnels. Yes, as mad as that.
Two things that were reinforced today about something you create. The first is that the best ‘marketing’ you can hope to achieve is creating something worthwhile. Creating something people care about and find value in. The second thing is that any form of success can take a long while to achieve. Don’t despair. The road is long.
Since around 2007, nearly 12 years, I have relied on a Mac to get me through my projects. During that time I have used a Mac Mini and two 13” MacBook Pros. They are machines that have served me very well during these times. Last year I had the first motherboard problem on any machine I have owned. To be honest it was 6 years old at this stage and had taken a considerable beating being in a household with young children.
Luckily I had invested a year earlier in an iPad Pro, in the hope of one day relying upon it as my portable device and hopefully getting an iMac for the desk. For the most part that plan is still on track as I have found my iPad to be more than capable for 80% of the tasks that I want to get done. My biggest limitation being the reasonably poor front end web development tools available on the iPad. The most glaring omission being the lack of a web inspector backed into any of the browsers.
Another reason I opted not to buy a replacement was that I was waiting for an update to the infamous keyboard. This came relatively quickly along with news of new Apple silicon towards the end of the year. While others may have just bit the bullet and gotten a replacement, these are COVID times and my iPad Pro was perfectly capable of handling most of my computing needs, something it was even much better than a MacBook.
The experience wasn’t rosey the whole year. For weeks I was plagued with poor bluetooth connectivity to the keyboard. It just made for a frustrating experience. The killer blow to me was a little over a month ago. I upgraded to 13.6 and ran into a battery drain bug for my iPad which actually derailed my production for several weeks as I spent far too long trying to resolve it.
It remains unresolved.
I jumped into iOS 14 Beta in the hopes that this will go away. It didn’t.
Tomorrow iOS 14 comes out of beta. Honestly I have little to no hope that this will get resolved until I take it in and pay again to get it ‘fixed’. A year of using the iPad as my sole machine has left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I got into Apple products to not have to worry about this sort of thing. I’m also not alone. I found myself angry at the Apple keynote today rather than being happy.
First scratch on the swatch. Totally forgot that this was a thing for watch wearers. Quick search online reveals that Polywatch might be the perfect solution for this type of thing. Imagine I will be using the hell out of this thing.
🎬 Finally finished Roma. I barely watch any television these days, so when I do I want to make sure that there will be some connection. This movie was super powerful but in a magical way. Transported me to a time and place I have never lived, which oddly was familiar. Beautifully shot.
Taking long walks on a Sunday has become a bit of a thing for me. It lets my mind wander a little. My body gets a little bit of exercise at the same time. Part of this is down to a general sense of anxiety. The soundtrack for this week is Tori Amos ‘Gold Dust’ album. Life is a collection of choices we make and then living with those choices. Everything we experience is down to a choice. To move or to stay. To take action or to wait. To buy or to abstain.
📚 I don’t typically like to give up on a book but Essentialism by just could not keep my attention. My cardinal rule when reading a non-fiction book is that it has to inform me and delight me by stretching my brain. Not in its prose but rather in the message and thoughts it is trying to convey. In this instance, even though I read 50% of the book it just isn’t very well written. It lacks a confidence. It lacks a unique sense of style.
This one is a day late but issue 034 ‘On Bridges’ of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This issue equals the same number of issues sent out last year. As always the subject crept up on me but I ended up learning a lot about bridges over the last few days.
So let me get this straight. The UAE no longer has diplomatic ties with Qatar, yet it is establishing them with Israel and in doing so has given the tangerino a nobel peace price nomination. Serious 2020, you are the worst.
📚 Currently reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown. While the thesis found inside is fine (although not particularly earth shattering), I have found the writing to be less refined when compared to the writing of Cal Newport or Seth Godin. In fact as I am reading things in a more concentrated manner these last few months I have been able to compare styles of writing when comparing similar topics. Even Ryan Holiday’s style meanders a little too much into what seems like superfluous examples.
It took me weeks. It got to the point that Yasmine was sick and tired of me looking at watch websites. Endlessly navigating between different styles, then checking them out on YouTube in the hope that I would be convinced. It didn’t all finally fall into place until this morning. A watch I may have looked at before in passing.
For weeks now I have been trending towards the Certina DS-8, a more beautiful and understated timepiece you probably are unlikely to find. My problem with it wasn’t the price, it was the very fact of its appeal. It was steel (and there had heft) it was large enough to make it presence felt. I went for utility instead.
The Swatch Skinera offers me the function over form that I was desperately seeking.
A life worth living. That is the ultimate goal that everyone aims for. A life they can look back on and say that it was worth it. Sure it was difficult. Sure it made you mad, angry, happy, frustrated or any other emotion., but crucially it was worth it. Sometimes its hard to separate this worth. Sitting in a cemetery surrounded by dead Danes I’m reminded that we all have one life and that we should all remember that fact as often as we can.
For the last few weeks I have been spending a stupid amount of time trying to choose a practical daily watch. With my iPhone relegated as a tool I use on occasion and for very specific things, I find myself wondering what time it is more regularly with no instant way of knowing this most basic of information.
Truth is I am struggling with the incredible sea of choice that is available. Getting into the watch game is very similar to getting into anything with a rich history. The options and things you need to get your head around is legion. That is the problem. You cannot find that one watch that satisfies all situations. You likely need a small collection. So the hunt begins.
Over the last 3 months it happened. The thing that I have been wanting to do for years. Recognise that reading long form articles is difficult inside a browser. Now I send it to Feedbin and then at some point send them to my Kindle where I am actually reading the damn things, rather than pretending to read them.
It doesn’t happen very often, once every few years probably, but new Smashing Pumpkins songs are the only music that I will buy without even waiting to hear it first. It doesn’t matter. The Corgan tickles my music funny bone. Every. Single. Time. The latest song Cyr is certainly no exception. The official website is equally cryptic but in a fun Pumpkins way. I guess they are releasing a new song every 2 weeks?
Jake Parker Plagiarized My Book. This is heartbreaking. I have participated in Inktober several times now and think Parker has created something many of us aspire to. However I owe so much knowledge to Alphonso Dunn, probably one of the best art instructors or teachers anyone could have. He is also exceptionally composed even on the end of pure theft. I’m not surprised that someone would steal from him, but I honestly did not think it would be Parker.
In the latest issue of my newsletter I shared the almost complete cover for my upcoming book, the Built Environment Compendium (or BEC for short). Its something I am really proud of and is the very first publication in a book format for Stet.Build. While still work in progress (things will likely change), I wanted to share a little bit about the process of designing the cover. I will be sharing a lot more information in the coming weeks and months.

I did not expect to like Ted Lasso as much as I have. Great writing, very clever in many little ways.
So you want to write and publish a newsletter? Based on my admittedly limited experience (when compared to the torrent of newsletter out there), it seems that the first 100 subscribers is a battle of attrition. Having said that, it is also the single greatest thing I have done online since coming online. In every respect I wish that I had started my letter 10 years ago (when I had the original idea). So here are 5 dos and 5 donts for those thinking or at the start of their journey:
Issue 033 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This issue has a decidedly Japanese flavour and touches upon circular architecture, the Hobonichi Techo, Perskovite and some vertical agriculture.
I barely watch any movies anymore (the thing has to be pretty spectacular to get onto my radar these days), but I am a total sucker for all things Batman. Surprisingly ‘The Batman’ teaser trailer is actually very, very good. Using the Nirvana song is inspired.
For nearly 6 years I used a bullet journal for my entire professional life. I found it provided me with the exact structure for the plethora of tasks in front of me. The last year and a bit I have wandered away. I haven’t been very happy with what I was left with.
I have come back to the fold only in a slightly different manner. I have multiple buckets. Each bucket is a single page. Each page can have notes (if they are super important), but really it is for tasks that I need to finish. By having clearly defined buckets I am able to muster up the necessary courage for the next step with the full knowledge of what I have to do.
Once I have everything in front of me, I want to block when I am going to carry out each of the buckets. This is the difficult part. Which task do I do first and how long will it take? Which task am I paralysed with because I am waiting for a response or input (the biggest killer).
Its a small step to take in what is no doubt going to become an incredibly busy period ahead of me. I’m glad to have been allowed the time to consider and reflect and read and adapt things, processes and thoughts that many others also struggle with.
Took a long walk this morning to take stock and review the year that just passed. It has been a real transition year for myself and the family. A rebuilding year. New country. New office. New language. New everything. Then Corona happened. We struggled in the beginning, like the majority of the world. We are now in a better place. Things are not as extreme as they were 6 months ago of course. Summer is officially over, with the weather changing here in Denmark.
Frankly, the change of the weather is not the only change happening around me. I am focusing on things that I am in control of. Very much of life is beyond your control. Remembering what you are able to control every day is super important.
Health wise, I’ve been on the No S diet for 4-5 months and have lost nearly 10kg in that time. It has not been particularly difficult (except the very start of things) and now when I get to indulge in things (like on my birthday) I don’t feel guilty about it all. Rather I know that tomorrow will be back to my 3 meals, no snacking, no sugar, no seconds. At this rate, I will be back to my pre-marriage weight by Christmas. For all those looking for a way out of their bad eating habits, this is one I can honestly stand behind 100%. It works, when nothing else came close.
From a creative perspective this year has been one of the most incredible in recent years. The readership for my newsletter In Abeyance continues to build, slowly but honestly in a very purposeful manner which I am very happy with. I’m also about to release my the first collection of the first year of the newsletter. Over the summer, the intention was to finish putting together the package. Its 90% there. Easily the most time consuming element being the cover that I have been drawing for a month — I am this close to finish this mega project off and its surprisingly met my original vision. Which I will go into more detail at some point.
Around 10 months ago my MacBook failed after a healthy 2 year run. At the time I lamented this fact, but was incredibly happy that it was my MacBook and not my iPad, as the latter offered me the use of drawing artwork and I would have to learn to manage my way around the limitations that iOS offered to do all the other stuff. A couple of weeks ago I upgraded to 13.6 and that was the beginning of the shit show. I got the battery drain bug, and no amount of resetting, restoring, contacting Apple, recovery mode (although not sure how long it lasted for).
Now my iPad is always plugged in as I don’t want to stress the battery in any way until this shit gets sorted out. What a shit storm iPadOS is turning out to be.
It turns out that one of the things that I have struggled with over the last few years is called ‘context switching’. You’re doing this thing over here, your brain gets bored, distracted or wanders and now it wants to do this thing over there. The switch comes at a price, your time. You’ll get there eventually I’m sure, but it might take you hours rather than minutes. Months, rather than days.
The first step out of this loop is to recognise that this is happening and also stop yourself as it happens. From there you can start to put the mental pieces in place to prevent it from happening. Traditionally I would just let my brain do its thing. I have started to find the incredible benefit of actually focusing on one subject and bringing my brain back to centre to let it complete the task at hand.
The switch usually happens when the hard part of the task you are doing presents itself. Your brain just gives into something easier. However if you fight the urge even for a fraction you are rewarded pretty quickly. I’m not advocating to eat through a wall every time, but I am saying to keep the pressure up just enough to let your brain flex.
It’s humid and muggy in Copenhagen tonight.
One of my fondest memories growing up in Greece, was early September. We had just come off a usually 2 1/2 month break. We had gotten our stationary in order for the new school year. The first signs of winter had begun. In each of those cases, I was the student.
For the first time, I get the winter feeling combined with the start of school, but now its for my son. We got him an awesome Dakine backpack and pencil case - a brand I have never heard of before, but I’m certainly going to be looking into more in the future. Then I filled his pencil case with Viking and Staedtler pencils - what else right?
Our neighbours packed their house today and left Copenhagen for good. They have decided for a more quiet life elsewhere in the country. With kids very similar in age to ours, we were able to compare notes with each other. They offered us some form of guidance through these strange times in a very foreign country. I’ll miss their carefree nature and wish them all the best in their future adventure.
It has been several years since I worked so long on a single piece. The features available to me in Procreate allows me to experiment in a way I have never been able to do before. Looking forward to sharing the full piece eventually.
For all the time that I have had my iPad it has worked flawlessly. I have mothered this thing, considering it is my primary tool. However in the latest update, iPadOS 13.6, I stumbled onto a nasty battery drain bug that I cannot resolve. Now the thing drains even when it is not doing anything.
I have AppleCare but its not worth the money I paid for it because AppleCare is not international, it is tied to the country you bought it in.
I’ve restored this thing from or without a backup, I’ve factory reset from recovery mode (going to a store because my work computer refuses to recognise the ipad when it is connected). Just at a loss as I depend on this thing for so much.
📚 Just finished reading Fortunately, The Milk (the Scottie Young edition). This interview is a great ‘directors commentary’ and the reason for writing it.
📚 Really looking forward to reading Talking to My Daughter About the Economy by Yanis Varoufakis. I stumbled across this book when I first got to Copenhagen. Something tells me I am going to tear through this over the weekend.
First days of school and my heart is in my mouth. In a country he knows little about, with a language he does not understand he’s been thrown into the deep end. He will swim very soon I am sure (at least everyone tells me that, and I have grown to believe this), but it doesn’t make the act any less difficult to watch.
Issue 032 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out now. This issue we talk about hydrogen energy, the future of BIM software, and the work of Mateusz Urbanowicz.
Since the blast, I’ve not really spoken very much. Yasmine has obviously taken it particularly hard, considering she was on the phone to her mother during the explosion itself. Shattered glass and rubble is a familiar sight in Lebanon. I would have hoped that this type of news coverage was over for the country, sadly it will never be over. I am slightly heartened by some of the support that is coming from the world, you know that things would have been different if we were not going through Corona. Fuck off 2020. Seriously, just fuck off.
Every year on the 1st of August, the peeps over at Hobonichi start their month long ‘festival’ leading up to the release of the new planners. This is the 20th Anniversary of the product line.
Last year I decided that these were not for me after having spent several years trying to use it as a journal. The format and size has not worked for me. However I have found that this type of notebook can enter my professional life.
For years I have depended on an A5 bullet journal style notebook. As I meander my way in my working life, what I do day to day has changed. Having adopted the Working Memory method, this Hobonichi Weeks would be how I would capture my thoughts and ideas in paper form, when I am away from something electronic (which surprisingly is happening more and more often).
Following reading Digital Minimalism, I’ve found myself circling around Cal Newport and his way of thinking. His podcast has made my digital detox cut. Even though he sends out two episodes a week, I find the information and discussion to be super useful in a practical sense.
I have been trying to refocus my mind in the little pockets of “free” time that I have available to me. One of the key takes from this week’s episode has been to identify my daily lynchpin tasks that over time build in a way that is important to me. Identifying these tasks is only part of the solution. Defining exactly when I want to do this will hopefully help me maintain this task. Each task has an elastic timeline, from 5 minutes to 1 hour tops.
I’ve settled on five separate tasks:
Maybe doing more than I can chew to be honest, but some of these items I think I will be able to do daily, other items I might find that I miss a day or 2 a week. That’s fine, it’s not a sprint, its a marathon. Over time I hopefully will be more consistent.
Issue 031 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This is an important issue for me as I am changing the format a little bit to allow me to finish my book (currently finishing off chapter 07 of 12).
For 26 issues I have been using Mailerlite to publish my newsletter. For the most part the experience was perfectly fine except the friction between moving from Markdown into the final email.
I switched over to the rich text editor (which admittedly in beta) and while the output was better, the friction has become unbearable. The interface in Safari iOS also does not work, by their own admission. Simple things like adding a link or deleting is just broken. Its been months of literally no improvement. The few times I have sent a support email, I’ve not had my issue resolved. Again I’m not a paying customer, but what I was reporting were bugs that could be fixed.
So what to do? I think I’m going to be moving back to Buttondown. The time spent on formatting a newsletter or wrestling with it could be better spent doing something else entirely. I am trying to reduce the friction in my life and my projects and this certainly qualifies as an important step.
What about the design? I’ve decided it doesnt really matter. Not really. What matters is that my readership get a well formatted email, that is typographically rock solid with a few minor items elements of flair. It’s likely too late for this issue (which comes out on Wednesday) but from next issue for sure.
I lost my uncle.
My mother’s face crumbled on the call. She couldn’t hold back the tears. Neither could I.
He was by and large a towering figure in my life. To understand the reverence that I held for this man is to understand my mother’s own upbringing. My uncle was the same age as my father, they were in the same class - small town Lebanon. My uncle however couldn’t finish his schooling. He had to shoulder the responsibility left by his own father. My grandfather died around the ages of 50 (heart attack) and left behind him his wife and eight children. The oldest barely in her early 20s. The youngest barely a child of 4 years old. I remember considering the weight that was on his shoulders. Yet for most of his life my uncle was a jovial character. His smile always warm. Natural.
My favourite memories that are seared into my memory however are as a child he held a special place. He loved kids. So much so that even after raising his fathers, he had seven of his own. During the years of war, he would pick us all up from the airport, an arduous journey, with a smile on his face. The best welcoming committee anyone could hope for. Optimism always shining, even when the country had fallen apart.
In that same mini bus/van he would pile all the cousins (there must have been 10 of us at a time) up and take us to the beach. Then we would go and get the best ice cream in the world (I made sure we had the same at our wedding). When we got home his work was not done, he would line us all up, hose us down from all the sand and salt water before sending us off to our mothers.
Sharp. He was a do-er. He would get shit done. I remember my mother telling me about the times her brother would come back exhausted from work after most of her family had gone to sleep. My mother would make him something to eat and off to bed. Only to wake up again before the family had woken up and repeat the cycle all over again.
He wasn’t a flamboyant character. A man who always lived in modesty. A man who lived two lives. One before and after his stroke. Things changed. There was a brief time where his mind wandered. Then there was a time where he was obsessed with the family tree. Something was lost. In life, you get one body and one mind. Sometimes parts of one fail before the other.
My mother had seen him a few days earlier. They’d talked for 20 minutes (a rarified feat), but he was getting hungry so he had to excuse himself and go. You’d get a few minutes from him here and there. Always in a seeming rush. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll catch up soon.’
My uncle Mohammad died yesteday.
I could have given him my old iPhone 6, but I decided to go a little less digital. Zane is fascinated by animals and creatures and nature in general. One of the ‘annoying’ habits he’s developed is asking us to ‘take a picture’ of bugs and beetles and ants. After the 200th fly or whatever it gets a little tiring.
Instead I gave him our last point and shoot Canon I bought 12 years ago. The experience is not great but for a 6 year old it has enough buttons and complexity to allow him to fiddle while taking one picture after the other.
Sometimes you need a good old think, a piece of paper and a pen to solve the difficult problems. Today I ‘solved’ two issues that relate back to the work I am doing on Stet.Build. The first related to the format that will unlock a bunch of things for me. The second is in how I use Twitter.
On our bicycle ride to Valby park, Zane asks me ‘Dad, what is the M-sign for?’. That son is for McDonalds and its an amazing feat that you are 6 years old and we have managed to shelter you from what that establishment provides.
It also goes to shows the strength of branding, considering that intersection had plenty of other symbols, the m-sign stood out from all the noise.
One of the things that I have not managed to re-introduce to my life is the act of reading comics. It seems very strange for me, considering I was absolutely obsessed with them while growing up and then well into my 20s as well. They have mostly disappeared from my life as I have decided to concentrate on other projects.
Really the stories that I wish I had completed was Blade of the Immortal, 100 Bullets, Saga and Scalped. I’m sure I have missed a shit ton of great books that have been created, but those where stories I had invested a lot of time into and want to find out what happens. Maybe I start there (as I have most of these in some digital format) and work my way slowly back. I do have 9 whole days off starting today, might be a nice way to do a different kind of summer reading.
Issue 030 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This one has empathetic leadership, world energy and some analogue vs digital.
Today I ventured into the office for the first time since the 1st week of March. A little over 4 months has passed. I took my bike for the first time. The ride there was mostly pleasant. Birds chirping. Sounds of church bells in the distance. The city was waking up slowly. Sun was shining in my face.
To look at Copenhagen, is to look at a city that is not going through a pandemic. Nobody is wearing masks. People are in Cafes and restaurants and bars partaking in ‘normal’ activities. I look outside my office window and I see a swarm of people outside Tivoli waiting for the doors to open.
It is very difficult to square what is going on in this country against what is happening across the world. Its not that Denmark doesn’t give a shit, its just that it sees a different threat because of this. Maybe its down to the size of the country? Maybe its how people generally respect the rules here? I expect to make more regular trips into the office to get a new perspective on life. Talk to people other than my wife and kids. Make new connections, but at a slower than usual pace.
Hopefully a second lockdown is not imminent. It took me this long to start to come out of the first one.
Its funny how things click into place.
2½ years ago, I’d all but given up on having an online presence. Then Micro.blog came along and gave me a limited framework from which to build something. Similarly I have been wanting to draw more regularly. The process makes calms me, but starting off a drawing was always a challenge. I didn’t make the process easy for myself and every time I would sit down, it was a chore to start. In a similar way, I think I have found a way to make entry simple
I have settled on is focusing on urban sketching. The idea is that this will help me understand how buildings and the built world is put together. I’m also going to be using photo reference. Not to replicate the photo as a drawing, but rather to allow me to travel the world and discover interesting details. I’m also limiting the amount of time I spend, to between 30 min to 1 hour every morning. The drawings don’t have to be a particular size, they just have to be fun. I hope to fill many, many books with tons of sketches.
I guess that is the one thing I would tell me 20 year old self. Provide proper constraints. Make it as easy for yourself as possible. And most importantly pick a time of the day and do it again and again and again.
I must have imported around 500 photos and posts from Instagram and Tumblr, which leaves around 1000 posts over a 2½ year period. At first there is a question as to the reason for posting. Simply, it is primarily for myself. My site is one of the first sites I visit every morning. I head on over to the previously page and relive and remember my life from 1, 2 or more years ago. I don’t publish my deepest darkest thoughts (those I chuck into my journal), rather it is fun milestones that I would otherwise not record.
Today for instance was the first time that I took Zane on a long bike ride. It was a little bit stressful at the start as I needed to set some ground rules and make sure he kept close by and didn’t get in the way of other cyclists. Once we were inside the park it was a pure joy of just riding our bikes and exploring a park filled with trees towering above and around us. Its a moment in time, captured for me to see and relive in the future again and again.
In Denmark, kids draw things as big as their imaginations allows them, with massive sticks of chalk. Temporary graffiti. Also might use that as a self portrait.
Kinda annoyed by the smudge…but only just. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t exist in the digital world. Cmd+Z and its gone.
A small update about Affinity Publisher for iPad right at the end of this article. They cannot make this fast enough as far as I’m concerned, but I would say beginning of next year is the earliest we’re likely to get our hands on it.
For years I have been buying art supplies and notebooks and all manner of stationary. Over the last 6 months as we have settled into life in Denmark I have the time and mental space to use all this stuff. They are like small gifts my previous self gave to my current self.
Danish summers. First you give me glorious sun. Sun like I’ve never seen before. Crisp. Pure. Clear. Then. Then you rip my heart out with changeable and non stop drizzle for 2 weeks. Begone foul deamon. Begone.
Shapr3D looks incredible. I was looking for something like this a few years ago when I was developing my very first side project. It kinda faltered around the 3D modeling stage. Maybe I can revive this project…
Also working on something else which has been burning a hole in my head for years. The year of consolidation continues. If it wasn’t for fucking Corona, this year would/could have been awesome on so many fronts.
I have wondered about whether to use stock photography in my articles on Stet.Build and have decided to add some photos where I think there is something really appropriate. The surprising thing is the quality of the photos that are now freely available from places like Unsplash.
Issue 029 of my newsletter In Abeyance tackles architectural glass. This issue marks the halfway mark of the newsletter. Like everyone else on the list I’m always interested and excited to find out what the next subject is and what I will learn.
Not sure if he’s too young (he’s six), but I started reading The Hobbit to Zane as a bedtime story. Partly inspired by the latest two episodes of Revisionist History, which you should totally check out, if only for the Smaug references and music.
After nearly 4 years (maybe more?) on my Kindle, I finally finished The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero. I found a lot of his words can be applied and spread across any design practice really. It’s now available in a beautiful online edition and in a gorgeous paper package.
Love this post by Justin Duke (of Buttondown fame), The luxury of atypical success. This is kinda of how I see my work on Stet.Build. It’s something I am incredibly proud of, I’m having a ton of fun doing the work itself. The cherry on top is the amount I am learning in the process as well. Find that little project and let the moss grow.
In September iA Writer turns 10 years. Easily one of my favourite tools (digital or otherwise). Ramping up, iA have refreshed their site. As with the best ‘redesigns’, they’ve taken all the good from before, but added refinement.
There was much said and discussed as the world gradually went into lockdown. The one idea that resonated with me was that we should aim to be better coming out than when we went in. For me this happened in two distinct ways:
These are two major elements of my life that I have felt had gotten away from me. The most encouraging element is that I have been able to maintain.
The very last element that I am now slowly starting to dip my toe in cautiously is social media. That is Twitter and Micro.blog. I am also in no rush to reintroduce this back into my life. For example on Micro.blog I have added Manton and Jean to my RSS feed and that is it for now, as though I was starting from zero and building the list in a very slow and purposeful manner. I don’t ever want to go back to that phase in my life when I was basically scrolling mindlessly. The signal to noise ratio has to be maintained at a point which is giving me joy and value.
The Flying Gherkin is a series of children’s books by Fosters & Partners. It’s funny to see a building I spent several months on during construction be used in a children’s book.
Dribbble has been a source of inspiration for a while now. More importantly however is that I enjoy looking back at the work in the same way I enjoy looking back at my photos and previous posts. So I’ll try and post something new from my work in progress on a more regular basis.
These Dieter Rams Wallpapers from Arun are so great.
It’s now been 4 weeks into my digital detox, so its time to review how that’s been going.
I have said this before and it absolutely remains the case but 4 weeks ago my attention was completely hijacked. I had fallen into a trap that I had enabled and partially built for myself.
Sadly this had been going on for years. What is even sadder, is that looking around me, I know that I am not alone. If any of the above has resonated with you, then I honestly encourage you to try and read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport and start thinking about how you want to manage your life.
Like a switch that had been turned on, I was finally able to be more present around people around me. I have also been more present to people away from me having phoned a number of friends and family that I used to only text.
Sure that number could be a little better but this is barely the first month. There will be plenty of time to review.
One of the things that I implemented pretty early on is to write, on paper, every morning for about an hour. For sure the amount of writing notes I took in this month far exceed what I have done in a very very long time - if ever.
This has been one of the biggest joys that I have gotten back. In the space of this time I have managed to read 4 books, 3 issues of the Economist and several mega articles on the internet. Wait, what?
Somehow I have also been able to get some actual drawing done as well. Not just for In Abeyance but also randomly. Its a slow start but one that I have wanted to include as part of my daily routine for years.
This has been the greatest gift that I could give myself. My evenings are now filled with reading and the occasional show.
I know I am very, very late to the party but I can’t get enough of Wait But Why. So much greatness on this site. I know I’ve stumbled on this site in the past, but it hasn’t really clicked until yesterday?
I have wanted to keep a sketchbook that I actually use on a daily basis for years. I would keep these books and use them sporadically. This meant books got filled over several years. At the rate I’m going that trend will hopefully change and for once I will actually use all the stationary that I have bought over these years.
Something felt off.
I put the final touches on the latest issue and then we went downstairs for the kids to play in the park. I normally take a small notebook with me and just try and collect my thoughts for a few minutes while the kids play in the sand (I hate playing in the sand). Across from me was a tree. I looked up and just thought to myself ‘I can actually see this tree. Why can’t I draw the thing?’ I could see the values, I could see details. So I went back to my favourite teacher, Alphonso Dunn. The man is arguable the best art teacher I have ever had. I recommend you buy both his books and subscribe to his channel. Its all gold.
Issue 028 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This one was different. The tock issues are usually a lighter affair, but with my renewed attention and focus I was able to expand on several subjects. Also updated the design of the email itself.
Week 3 of digital declutter…and it has been properly quiet. Both in my head and in my online world. I haven’t disconnected completely, because frankly that just wouldn’t be practical.
I have let in many newsletters into my life, and unlike before I am reading these in their entirety, rather than skimming. This has meant I am actually loving email now. because it’s all good.
In terms of news, I read through my issue of The Economist and if I want an additional fix,…I read some more of the issue - the beauty of this publication is that it is dense. I have reached for the online websites out of habit (& likely some boredom) but I have managed to stop myself every time.
Another pillar that fell this week was podcasting. I had a very rough idea of what I wanted to bring back into my life. I limited it to seasonal series (Revisionist History, 13 Minutes from the Moon, Against The Rules), sporadic podcasts (On Margins and Hello Internet), and bi-monthly (Erasable Podcast). The only weekly podcast I have allowed is Akimbo, although this is a 30 minute show. I might also bring 99% Invisible back.
I’m also playing a game with myself which is to keep driving the average amount of weekly screentime down week on week. The big margins happened a while ago, but now 10% or 15% is surprisingly meaningful.
Every day after work we take the kids downstairs to the various parks around our house. It is one of the main reasons we chose this particular location when we moved as it afforded us not one but close to 7 parks for the kids to play. These last few days Zane has been obsessed with bumblebees. I will happily admit that I did not really appreciate the difference between a bumblebee and a regular honeybee (except maybe that they were bigger and don’t die if they sting you).
Living with a 6 year old nature obsessive will enlighten even the most uninterested 40 year old. Today I go to spend a good 15 minutes look at a tree in bloom covered with all sorts of insects. Honeybees, bumblebees, caterpillars, ladybirds and a magpie. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have spent a fraction of that time if this was 3 weeks ago. Every time I see someone engrossed in their phone missing such life around them I feel a little sad, in the same way that I would feel for someone who could not kick a smoking habit.
The last pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place.
I was following around 280 people on Micro.blog, 200 people on Twitter and 200 odd on Instagram. All three services do an equally poor job of creating an environment for reading. You go to your stream and its a long list of posts from these hundreds of accounts. Nothing really tying them together. Mixed in are @replies. There is no visual cues to help you see when someone has written a long piece, compared to shorter thoughts. Crucially, all services draw you in (whether it serves them, like Twitter and Instagram) or not (as is the case with Micro.blog).
So I decided to unfollow everyone1.
My thinking is that by resetting everything, I only allow certain people into the circle and in a controlled manner. You get access to my attention in the manner that I want and on my time. The gatekeeper to this attention is Feedbin, which has gotten more powerful over the years. Spending some time to organise what goes into Feedbin will allow me to spend targetted amount of time there. It used to be a daily affair, but I imagine I can likely spend an hour total on a weekend and catch up on what every one is doing (and then engage if that is what I want to do).
Micro.blog was the worst at doing this. It took me an hour and 11 minutes — interestingly most of those I was following hadn’t posted in over a year. Twitter took around 18 minutes — it was a two clicks affair as I had to confirm I wanted to unfollow every time. Instagram took 8 minutes. Tap. Unfollow. ↩︎
Having the mental space to do other things than wasting it on the internet introduces previously difficult tasks. Tasks that you may have needed a lot of energy to accomplish become somewhat more plausible and achievable.
This week I spent four and a half hours on my phone. It wasn’t scrolling Twitter or in Safari or watching Youtube. Rather I was in the Finances app, easily the best of it’s kind and there are many, sorting out our budgets for the rest of the entire year. I’m using the ‘envelope’ method that is achievable within the app (a feature I only recently found out about). Previously I was using a spreadsheet, which while did the job, wasn’t as easy to maintain, and didn’t give you the same insights.
Putting the effort in now reaps multiple benefits moving forwards. For a start the mental overhead is vastly reduced - a subject I intend to write a lot more about in the coming year. You make decisions and you can either stick to them, or knowningly go in a different direction. While life is typically unpredicable we can however put some plans together and manage through things as best as we can.
Not sure when it happened, but the best way to read and experience The Economist is on the Kindle. First of all there are no ads. Each article has a small bar at the bottom to show you how far into the article you’ve gotten. It gives you the number of words in the article right at the start (so you are aware of what you’re getting yourself into). You can check the meaning of those clever little words that pepper the articles straight away. Getting through sections and sub-sections is really easy from the top (rather than flicking through pages and pages). And importantly I don’t need to recycle something that has been flown across borders to get to me.
My favourite thing however is the balance in the stories. It doesn’t try to sugar coat things. The whole experience is just so much better for my mental health if I’m honest. I will eventually supplement additional news sources, but it certainly won’t be in the manner that I consumed it previously. For the foreseeable future this magazine gives me an awesome overview of what is going on across the world in a manageable and enjoyable way.
The only area that I wish was done better was better resolution and size of the graphs. The Kindle does not do a very good job with these.
Reading the indepth interview that Miyazaki gave for My neighbour Totoro and today was transported there with a brief visit to Fredericksburg park. 10 minutes from the house and absolutely breathtaking.
One of the things that my digital declutter has allowed me to do is re-evaluate how I consume and collect my news. I used to think that news coverage from the BBC or even CNN would be sufficient for my needs. Every once in a while I’d venture over to the Guardian on occasion (but that paper annoys me more often than not). I would lament the fact that I could never carve out the time to read a whole issue of the Economist every week and carry on scrolling something else.
So to be more purposeful with how I consume my news, I’ve subscribed to The Economist (there is a four week trial period on the Kindle). My news coverage will be a week ‘old’, rather than minutes or even days, but hopefully that will mean that someone has provided the necessary thought and nuiance into the coverage itself. I also like how The Atlantic presents itself, however I think that this is too America focused for my liking.
Writing is often messy business. At least in those initial stages when a piece is not fully formed. You have the various threads. The ideas are relatively clear in your mind. They’re just all in the wrong place. Paper doesn’t judge. It doesn’t care for such things. I’ve ‘relearnt’ the importance of staying on paper for as long as possible. The text in the photo became the introduction of my latest issue.
Two weeks into my digital declutter and this is what my mornings are now starting to look like. Spend as much time on the paper before moving to digital. I’m also now starting to think about how I begin to introduce media back into my diet. It won’t be the free for all that it once was. That person is long gone and I honestly have no intention of bringing him back.
We were talking about sleep yesterday (something we have talked about regularly for 6 years now since our first was born and decided to destroy that most fragile of things). One of the incredible gifts that I have gotten since relegating my phone to a distant tool (probably my 5th or 6th favourite piece of technology at the moment, a thought I would have considered madness 2 weeks ago), is that my sleep has been noticeably and vastly improved.
I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and find it difficult to get back to sleep. My brain would start working at 100%, ideas, thoughts flashing into my head and there to feed me something was always my phone at my bedside. Part of the reason I let this happen is because I love the internet. Its an incredible resource and one of my favourite human inventions…when we use it correctly.
I do however feel completely disconnected from the world, having not read a headline in 2 weeks. I have no idea what is going on in the world. I don’t know how well or badly Corona is going. I have not followed along with Seth Meyers and Trumps latest antics. Rather I have been getting into the head of Seneca and a 50 year old Hayao Miyazaki.
Issue 027 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This one is all about wind turbines and easily the most fun I have had writing an issue. I attribute this to the manner in which I am now writing these pieces, which I’ll go into in future posts.
That was the most captivating 40 minutes we as a family have had in a long time. I wasn’t alive when NASA was at its peak, so I was only aware of it’s past successes and its decline. With SpaceX, a whole new generation of space geek can start a new. Also Florida to Ireland in a matter of minutes is pretty cool. Also, while I liked the space suits, not so sure about those space boots. Also, I thought the new (old) NASA logo was going to be used on this? Instead we got the meatball everywhere?
One of the things about being hyper aware of where your time goes on your machine (because it’s not all that common), is that you can actually analyse what you are spending time on. In this case I spent 2 hours on a single chart for the upcoming newsletter. Why? Because AmCharts. While super powerful is also pretty hard to understand what the 2000 options actually do. I am thankful that the service exists, I do wish that there was a simpler option available. I’ve considered just making things in numbers and publishing images. Whats stopped me is that the interactive charts are delightful and can contain a lot more information that is digestable.
Really looking forward to this SpaceX launch on Saturday. Hopefully we will also see the ‘worm’.
It’s very strange to have any colour in iA Writer but the new highlight feature is a really welcome addition and goes really nicely with the flashing blue cursor.
While many swear by Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations. My favourite philosopher is Seneca. Something about the way he frames his arguements. The topics he chooses, resonate best with me. I’m currently reading On the Shortness of Life, which is incredibly apt for this new path of reclaiming my time. This line comes early on:
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it…So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.
While the whole book is filled with so much goodness, this one also resonated:
But learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.
I used to be a voracious reader. That seems to have been at least 10 years ago. Before my attention was hijacked. I let it happen. It was easy. Click. Tap. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.
Five days into my digital declutter and I have read two books (amongst a range of other activies that don’t involve the internet). In the last decade this act would usually have taken me 2 to 3 months.
I remember reading once how one of Stephen Kings advice to new writers was to read. Read widely. Over 50 books a year. I also remember thinking to myself that this is fantasy. This was impossible. This was never sustainable. At my peak I could barely finish 1 book every 3 weeks.
I don’t think I’ll reach 50, but I intend to reclaim my reading habits. I think I have around 30 unread books in my little library and on my kindle.
As much as I love Ben Elton’s books, they have such shit covers. I mean, don’t judge a book by its cover is best used on his books. They are soo poorly designed. I wish someone would do them more justice because they really are all excellent.
For over a year now I have written my bi-monthly newsletter exclusively on a computer. On the odd occasion I might write a few notes down. A couple of sentences. Maybe sketch some ideas. I never would write very much before quickly jumping back onto the screen. When I needed to FAQ check something, I would jump online and search for it,sometimes returning back to base to continue writing, sometimes not.
The latest issue has been written by hand first. The thoughts and ideas, structure and points that I want to make written by hand. It’s a decidedly different way of approaching the same thing, but I feel that this is a very purposeful approach. The words and structure is not fully formed. Things change from the written word to the typed word, but much of the meandering is carried out on paper first. When it then comes to typing, the act is oh so much easier. Direct.
Two thoughts. I’m not going to dwell on the past. That is done. I write these things to remind myself never to lapse. Its much better being in control even if it’s a little bit less convienient. The end result is better for it.
Following on from theme this week, Don’t Be Evil by Rana Foroohar has jumped up my list of reading. After I finish my 2nd book of the week.
Looking outside my window is a reasonably busy road (by Danish standards), I think there might be at least 10 cars passing through every hour. Cyclists however travel on this road in their 10s in the same time. One of the things I have noticed is the fact that oftentimes I will see people cycling while checking their phones. On the other side, is one of the busy parks in my community. It’s home to three trampolines in the ground and kids are always playing here with their parents in tow, who are checking their phones. I used to be one of these people. Oh sure I tried to keep the damn thing in my pocket, but I know I failed to do that on many occasions.
We should not be slaves to our devices and technology. Technology should be our tools. Yet our monkey brains finds the appeal of something shiney to strong to resist. It feeds on our base instincts of not wanting to be bored. Of being entertained. Of trying to be more ‘productive’ with our time. The technology is so pervasive, it quickly becomes our comfort blanket.
They really should have a mental health warning whenever you buy one of these things.
For over a year now I have watched Seth Godin publish to his blog every single day. What struck me the most about these posts was the endless well that he was pulling ideas from and giving them form and pressing publish. What’s even more impressive is that he has been on this train for years. I always wondered what his secret was. He attributed to not having a television. I barely watch television, except specific shows that I watch with general intention. So why couldn’t I focus? Why couldn’t I do the same?
What was missing from the conversation was my phone. My phone offered the biggest distraction. It had hijacked my brain. This was then further augmented by how I used my computer. I let it happen to me again and again, even though I thought I was being mindful. While I was able to create and write a decent amount during this time, I did so inspite of being overwhelmingly distracted. It was very hard to focus. I’m now looking forward to seeing what I am able to produce and read and draw and create with this new found attention.
We’re taught a lot of things sadly we are also ignorant of a lot more. While the digital technology can be powerful and liberating, it can also have the ability to hijack our attentions without remorse.
Everyone gets 24 hours. My general perception was that we chose how to use those 24 hours. Sadly for a while now my 24 hours had been hijacked. I knew something was up a year ago, but its taken me till now to finally understand how bad the situation had become. Maybe Corona allowed me to get really bad again before I realised that something was fundamentally amiss.
I remember Stephanos, my friend Stathi’s father, tell me how he quit smoking. He was in his shop shouting to his wife that he couldn’t find his pack of cigarettes. Meanwhile he had a lit one in his mouth, he was holding another lit one and there was a third one in an ashtray infront of him. He swears he didn’t see any of them until it was pointed out to him what was going on.
Everyone should re-evaluate their digital habits. If you’re anything like me, you’re in soo deep you don’t even realise what is happening.
I’ve had my Kindle for 6½ years and today is the first time I came across the email your notes feature. Amazon packages it all up for you and sends your notes and highlights in two formats, a CSV file and a fully formatted PDF. Such a great feature.
At the time I genuinely thought that I was lucky. Leaving the UK in 2009, coincided with Facebook gaining popularity. I had a conricopia of communication apps that I could use to keep in touch with my friends. Instead my lizard brain decided not to do that.
What I found was that my conversations with friends and family to have diminished completely. Even connecting was difficult. It didn’t need to be that way. I let the fact that I hadn’t spoken to many people get the better of me. I felt embarassed that I had let the time between conversations slip away. It’s something I have always struggled with.
One of the best chapters in Digital Minimalism is about conversations (talking, phone calls and video calls) compared to connections (text messages & comments). It has really resonated with me. It is a little upsetting that I’ve effectively lost 10 years or conversations, but I think the friendship is strong enough to endure this short passage of time as we all got busy having families.
I’m going on a digital declutter for a month.
When I come out of this month, hopefully I’ll have decided what is truely important for me across everything. Podcasts, Spotify, social media, messages, phone calls, websites, RSS feeds, Youtube, Netflix. All this stuff just added more and more clutter to my mind. It wasn’t a lot of time on each either, but it was death by a thousand cuts.
Removing Safari from my phone has enabled me read half a book in the time that I reclaimed from that single act alone. What can I reclaim if I turn off or remove everything else?
Castro was a difficult one to delete, but it’s gone. Spotify is out. Tweetbot gone. The Micro.blog app (and Gluon and Icro) are all gone. Instead I bought Mimi for posting photos and obviously having Drafts lets me post everything.
I’ve added an app called Portal to give me some ambient sounds while I work and have my noise cancelling headphones on. My Pimsleur app now gets a prominent position, along with my Kindle app. Reminders is now on my phone again.
Email apps are off the phone, I only will check these once a day and mostly to get rid of services that have taken liberties with my email address. Before I did that I archived everything in my apps to start fresh. If I needed something then I can always search for it. The
My phone now becomes a place to read my books, learn Danish, or its a functional tool — buy groceries, log activities, take photos, write notes. My iPad is a place where deliberate work is carried out. Writing, editing, drawing, designing.
The plot thickens. nvUltra for iOS. Dammit and I had my text editor situation totally sorted this time. Honest.
Issue 026 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This issue is about 3D printing, the true cost of solar, the cooling prize and AutoMEP.
YouTube algorithm worked this time. Why people believe they can’t draw - and how to prove they can.
Incredible photos for the winners of the 2020 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition
Incredible analysis of the general cost of solar and how all previous predictions (including the author Ramez Naam) have been wrong. Now it’s time to work out all the stuff that goes around this pillar. See also issues 002 and 015 of In Abeyance for added context.
Obviously there is much to love about the latest update to iA Writer. I’ve been on the beta for a while now and just can’t get enough of this app (huge fanboy). So definitely looking forward to their physical product that they hinted at years ago, which I’m hoping ties into this tenth anniversary. Also they always nail the music for their promo videos.
Since moving to Scandinavia, one of the weirdest things I am still learning to live with (in a good way) is how much longer the days are now. I mean, it’s nearly 10 o’clock in the evening and the sun is just saying goodnight. Your day feels infinite.
I now understand why Google can ‘afford’ to give much of its stuff away while Apple continues to charge you for iCloud storage. They don’t have enough of their own infrastructure. Probably why they rely on AWS? Apple clearly needs more data centres to be in a better position to give storage away with their devices.
A couple of interesting facts from the issue 025 of In Abeyance. Firstly Google uses nearly 5 times as much electrical energy for its operations compared with Apple. Secondly, data centres account for around 1% of all global energy use. What’s more impressive is the fact that these values have remained flat since 2015.
Not sure if I’ve linked to this before, but the Simple Icons project offers an incredible array of SVG icons for all the brands. All the brands. Currently clocking in at 1315 icons.
If Apple release Xcode on the iPad I’m going to learn Swift and release an app.
I’ve been having fun discovering the simple jobs of things I bought years ago and now I have the opportunity to spend more time with them and use them more.
First up is probably one of the most elegant and functional ballpoint pen ever made, the Rotring 600.
Went on a bit of an ebook shopping spree. Top of my list was Drawdown, which ‘describes the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming.’ Hadn’t appreciated that the book was the work of an army of contributors.
Posting to my site and having full control of everything has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done online. also want to give credit to @manton and the Micro.blog system which also gives you control of how you share your information more widely.
I recently decided I wanted to control what I post to my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. I’ve decided to use both as a means to post similar types of information, which will be different from what I typical post to my personal site. What I didn’t want to do is create more work for myself — having to post the exact same thing two or three times. So I created a new category and hooked the category RSS feed up to post to these services. My site remains the one source of everything.
A few bonus items:
@craigmcclellan has an awesome Drafts with categories action. The information on the Micro.blog help site is very good in understanding how Micro.blog handles the cross-posting.
The year of consolidation continues.
Scratch all of that. It turns out RSS control on Micro.blog doesn’t really work this way. There is some funny limitations under the hood. Basically you can’t control your RSS feeds in this manner.
We have a three day weekend ahead of us. Good time to reset my brain a little bit as it has running on overdrive a little bit. Will try and do some more reading. Less interneting. So will try and go a little bit analogue for the majority of these days. I’m sure the internet will be fine while I’m gone.
If you’re looking for some more draw along with kids videos, DRAW with Jim Field are also excellent. On Vimeo rather than YouTube.
So it’s been an entire week on the No S diet. The first few days were relatively easy as I was enthusiastic. The next few days were a little more difficult. Now it has become a way of life.
There are just three rules and one exception:
No Snacks.
No Sweets.
No Seconds.
Except (sometimes) on days that start with “S”.
That’s it.
The no seconds has been tough. No snacking has been tougher. Actually the no sugar has been much easier than I imagined. Although it’s only been 7 days, I actually feel lighter. Not physically, but mentally. I enjoy and tend to savour my food more these days because it is several hour between meals. You get to eat whatever you want, just portion controlled and at very distinct times of the day. It’s also helped me slow the speed that I used to eat. I think it’s the simplicity of the diet that might make it stick with me.
One thing I didn’t do on purpose was to weigh myself. I decided to just see how this new routine makes me feel (apart from hungry at the moment) and how my clothes feel on me. Everything else is immaterial.
Issue 025 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This one is all about data centres and marries my love for the built environment with my love for technology.
The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
— David Viscott
💬
I now have no excuse. I used the last iteration of the MacBook for 6 years and loved that machine. The new MacBook Air is looking pretty good as well. I now have both options to choose from. No wondering about a mythical laptop that might come down the line. It’s here.
Doing some research for the next issue of my newsletter, I saw this table. Obviously blogging software does not have green credentials. WordPress, the biggest player (as far as I’m concerned) is tracking with a D rating. @manton any ideas where Micro.blog fits into all of this?
A Five-Day Plan To Grow Your Newsletter. Josh has been nailing this for a while now. In looking at this list, I realised I did none of these very well.
I was looking for an online habit tracker (phone based tracking just doesn’t work). I discovered HabitCal and The No S diet - they are by the same author Reinhard Engels, who is very funny. Also I kinda like the fact that his websites look like they were built in 1999.
Some people bake bread. Others collect watches. Some watch birds. I collect iOS text editors. Scratch that, I spend an incredible amount of time considering, testing and playing with text editors on iOS. It all started out looking for a text based nirvana. Ultimately my quest for that perfect editor has come up short as it has now dawned on me that the perfect text editor doesn’t exist. Rather what I have come to realise is that there are several amazing editors that have a number of strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to find the collection that best compliment each other in your quest for capturing and further developing your thoughts.
My collection of apps that I love on iOS are:
To that collection I have recently added Drafts as it has become my replacement The Archive on the Mac. My long held belief that the modal design established by Notational Velocity1 was/is the ultimate method for capturing and searching for text. Drafts introduces another way that is equally as powerful, only different.
In The Archive, once you open the app, the cursor is in the omnibar which lets you create or search for a note. In creating a note, you type in some words, which then become the name of the file and the first line of the new file. It’s an incredibly powerful concept that has not been replicated successfully on iOS yet (although there have been some flawed attempts).
Drafts does away with the search. For Drafts, by default, the first thing that you are allowed to is start writing in a blank file. That is where you start. If you want to search, there are three ways, press the search icon in the bottom right hand corner (prime location), press shift+command+f or pull down to reveal the search. The reason this is better for iOS is the fact that this entire app is replicated on the iPhone, with a single exception (that I can find), which is pinning the sidebar (this seems to only be available on the iPad).
One of the things that drove me away from using Drafts was that I thought it was too cluttered. I had bought into the minimal aesthetics provided by iA Writer and I liked it that way.
Except Drafts is more function over form. In many ways, this app is the total antithesis of iA Writer. The icon isn’t great (although you can change it). Both the overall graphic direction of the app and the iconography for the groups sidebar leave a lot to be desired. I’ve quickly learnt not to care.
Being able to write whatever I want and then call up a function and publish to my website in microseconds makes the function trump any ugly iconography found within the app itself. That is where I started seeing that there is more to this app than meets the eye. I published exclusively from it for 2 months before realising that all of my thoughts should live in here. Thoughts that need to be expanded upon can get moved over to iA Writer for a more refined experience.
The Archive has a similar feature to this, except it wasn’t graphically implemented as elegantly as this. This feature is available, but it is mostly hidden.
What I love about this particular feature is the fact that I can flip between different frames of mind. I want to write some thoughts about engineering? There’s a workspace for that. Something for this site? There’s a workspace for that. General reference texts? Yup, there’s a space for that.
Rearranging the text within a file, as per blocks, sentences or lines is an excellent idea that I’ve not encounter anywhere else. The fact that it has a shortcut for just about everything shows that the developer understands what is important. Version history for all your text is there and readily available within the app. And on the list goes. @cm called this app deep which is such an excellent description of what this app has to offer.
I don’t agree with the subscription model used and would have preferred if the subscription model established by Sketch was used instead. You pay once and continue to use the app that you paid for at that point in time for as long as you want. For 1 year you get all monthly updates. If you want future updates after that year, you have to pay again. Not sure what happens to all my Workspaces when the year is over tbh.
Having said that, there is plenty of room for the app to improve. The aforementioned graphical shortcomings. The selection of themes could be better, maybe something similar to those provided in iWriter Pro. The fact that there isn’t a baked in path to exporting the text as a series of files, which goes against some of what I want (but there might be a pretty easy workaround for that).
These are quibbles in what is otherwise one of the most pro writing app on any platform.
I wish I could find out why that website is still live? It’s not been updated in nearly a decade and from memory the app stopped working years ago. ↩︎
Finally got something Danish that isn’t groceries. I know it’s only a box of pencils but like Frank Chimero says:
Get enthusiasm on the cheap by buying a fancy wooden pencil to write everything down. A $3 pencil is now more exciting than a $2,000 computer. Many people will do the most mundane work just to feel a good tool fly.
Art is when a human being does something off-the-map, that changes somebody else for the better. Those are the key elements.
— Seth Godin
Great quote from Seth Godin about his definition of art.
This report by The Economist on why America’s COVID-19 death toll so high? highlights a number of issues with how things are set up. I have been tracking the numbers on a daily basis and it seems that overall things are settling down in America’s death rates, which is a positive sign at least.
It took two months but I finally decided to go the pro route for Drafts. I started tinkering with the app 2 months ago now, but I realised I should have gone all in the second my MacBook died on me. I have long consider Notational Velocity (followed by The Archive)the quintessential app for notes, but Drafts was able to convince me that there is a better way.
I have a much larger series of posts to make on text editors on iOS in general, but if you’ve not given Drafts a go, I highly recommend it for the correct type of writing and note collecting. I have only just started to scratch the surface of what this app is capable of, but every time I discover a new detail or feature, I’m just amazed at how versatile this app can be.
This collaboration between Viking and Caran D’ache has definitely been added to my want list.
First episode of the podcast, where Zane talks about what he misses the most about Dubai. The Green Planet. And animals. Lots and lots of animals.
It’s now been 6 months in Denmark.
The first month was a whirlwind to try and get everyone registered and finding a house. The second month was spent preparing for Christmas and surviving New Years in Denmark. The next two months was trying real hard not to fall into a massive depression due to the cold, dark, windy winter (I lie, it was refreshing experiencing the cold after so many years in the desert). The next two months were spent at home.
Looking ahead to the coming two months, home based working will continue for a little while longer, certainly as we enter spring (in the Kurt Vonnegut definition) and likely into parts of the summer. I am finally starting to look at buying a bike for myself and Zane who turns 6 very soon, so that will hopefully change how I see Copenhagen a little, delivering on one of the many promises this land held for us when we decided to come here.
As sensational as Michael Moore can be, his movies bring the mic to topics people either don’t know enough about or purposely ignore. This one is no different. Except this one has been released on YouTube.
Awesome breakdown of the New York Times front pages during COVID-19.
Over 100 short films that each look at a different piece of architecture in the UK. If you’re into architecture, there’s most of April sorted for you.
Issue 024 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This one looks at the construction industry’s response to COVID-19, Hadrian X and Monograph.
These videos for Midori MD are awesome. All the more for featuring one of my favourite Polish artists, Mateusz Urbanowicz.
In light of other stationary porn being shared, thought I would share my favourite pairings.
Muji notebook. Muji 0.38 Gel ink pen. Pilot Sign Pen - while I have a picture of the Pilot Sign Pen here, my absolute favourite thick pen is the Pilot V Sign pen.
Ok finally gave in and started watching Tiger King. It’s like an accident on the side of the road. You just can’t help yourself, you have to take a look and once you have you feel bad you did.
I’ve been a little quieter than usual. I’ve actually been keeping real busy working on two projects (both project Stet.Build related) all within my new favourite Apple app,….wait for it….Pages?! Yes Pages.
I will at some point delve into some of the things that this app does exceptionally well, along with some of the things it doesn’t, but needless to say it has comprehensively blown my very low expectations. So much so I have probably spent 10 hours over the last few days exclusively using this app.
If you are in the market for putting together any form of book that needs some typographic love and attention without going full InDesign you really need look no further.
Oh my, when did this happen. Pages for iOS is actually a legitimately good app for setting up a document. While I would honestly have preferred to be using Affinity’s Publisher, Pages is actually pretty handy during these times that I don’t have a Mac - although I am working to resolve that situation.
Today was the first time we took the kids out in 4 days. My mind has been seriously preoccupied so didn’t have the energy, but if it wasn’t the best medicine for your mood and a little nature.
It started off with seeing a magpie breaking a large branch from one tree, trying and trying again to pick it up and taking it to his/her nest.
This was then followed up with seeing a ladybird that the kids absolutely went crazy for - first time the little one has seen one and its wings were soo bright against the grassy background.
Everyone is going through a number of changes in their lives and trying to adapt. It’s now been 4 weeks since this lockdown began for us. At first it was about getting over the shock. Now it’s about settling in and doing things purposefully. As an absolute minimum in Denmark this is going to go on here for another month - although that is on the optimistic side of things. To make the transition even more disorienting, the changing of hours only added to my routine upheaval. Something I’ve not had to deal with for 8 years, I forgot that it messes your brain for at least 2 weeks, until you get your circadian rhythms back.
For the next month, I’m going to try and be more purposeful with our new reality.
Issue 023 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This one was more difficult than usual to write, as it’s one of the first opinion pieces I’ve chosen to write.
End of week four of living & working in the house. As we settle into our new reality, my old routines has been completely upended, but I’ve been looking to add new ones and re-establish the old ones.
I think I’ve finally gotten my writing mojo back. For the last few weeks I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time looking at graphs, getting upset and then doing it again a few minutes later. Needless to say it wasn’t doing my mental health any good.
I missed my deadline for In Abeyance as it was important that I write something that brought some clarity to everything that is going on around us at the moment. Like most people my mind has been completely overcome by a fog which is slowly lifting.
In case you are on the latest iOS and your spell check stops working because you’ve linked an external keyboard, there is a simple fix. Bring up the onboard keyboard, type a few things and it should get it to work again.
Yes, it’s designed to work that way.
Sorry, my mistake. No it isn’t.
Man, I can’t wait to be done with having to use the fucking iPad as a primary machine. iOS sucks soo hard with it’s flacky keyboard support, and spell check that works whenever it feels like. I’ve had tons of problems with macOS, but never keyboard issues.
Yesterday I was reminded of the single best trick from Atomic Habits, which is to stack your habits. I’ve been meaning to get back into learning Danish again. My commute all but stopped it as repeating Danish words again and again on a public train would make me the weirdo on the train. However sorting out the kitchen/dishes after dinner is a prime time to do a 30 minute lesson. Stacking these two habits together really works for me. Another habit I’m stacking is doing a HIIT session with the kids right after the working day is over. Helps me get out of whatever issues where in my head throughout the day and lets me play and interact with the kids straight away.
Carl De Keyzer spent 60 days in North Korea, where he was given unprecedented access to one of the hardest places to photograph. The photos, collected in a book and on his website are nothing short of mesmerising.
Cuba Sends Doctor Brigade to Italy. There is no other way to put it, heroes. As I was reading this I couldn’t help but tear up. The humanity on display is incredible. Heroes.
If you’re wondering what the next few weeks are going to look like for your countries, these graphs from Our World in Data offer some sobering insight. The only good thing coming out of America at the moment is Governor Cuomo who seems to have his shit together, unlike the tangerine 🍊.
One of the most important pieces of technology I’ve been using to really allow me to get through the day has been my noise cancelling headphones. These bad boys would come out only when I was travelling (ha!) or writing a report at work that I wanted no distractions. Now I use it to limit my distractions from the everyday noise in the house.
No idea if its the hand soap we are using or the combination of hand sanitizer and frequent washing but my hands are totally fucked. Cracked, bleeding and incredibly sore.
Years ago, when I was in University, Dan introduced me to the Iranian new year, Nowruz. He spoke with such enthusiasm about this day. How ridiculous our current new year is considering it happens at the darkest, wettest, coldest part of the year. It made no sense. It makes no sense. Rather, Iranians celebrated new years on the first day of spring. Spring is a time where the tide turns. When the days become more bountiful. When the sun begins to shine a bit more.
For myself, living in Scandinavia, it’s also the time when everyone south of us gets less sunlight than us. We’ve had to endure a long winter, now comes our reward. Copenhagen is showing it’s spring colours today. I’m thankful for that at least.
Also, to all the mothers in the Arab speaking world, Happy Mother’s Day.
This last week has been physiologically brutal. A lot of thoughts and ideas in my head (just like everyone else on the planet) as we all try and find some answers to all our legitimate and difficult questions. I have two links that gave me clarity and some reassurance on our collective future.
The first one is from Kottke, who has been nailing the COVID-19 coverage, and is an expansive article that really deserves your full attention. If there is one article you are going to read in full about this, let it be this one. Hopefully it will give you the necessary clarity it has given me.
The next one is a much shorter affair and just plain good advice from Seth.
I don’t know what you’re thinking.
— Head of a visiting Chinese Red Cross delegation
Utterly scathing response on how Italy is handling the situation. Hopefully it’s enough for Italians not taking this seriously to start now before it get even worse.
Shawn Blanc is giving away free access to his Time Management course. You need to use a coupon code. I’ve signed up, maybe it will help you work out some things during this time as well.
We need some happiness and brightness in a world that is absolutely heading towards some real darkness. If you have young ones, one of my favourite children’s authors is Rob Biddulph will be drawing for the kids to follow along. Tuesdays & Thursdays at 10am UK time.
This season of Better Call Saul is finally hitting it’s stride and showing us what makes Saul Goodman such a good character to watch. It’s also interesting to see how they are filling in some backstory of how Mike breaks bad as well (can I even use it that way?).
Top working at home tip: You can use your iPad as a second display, even if you’re on a Windows laptop.
Like many I am currently grappling with what is going on around the world. Trying desperately not to keep refreshing my newsfeeds to get a glimpse of even the tiniest piece of information. In a constant loop that is breaking my head if I’m honest.
When does civil society break down exactly? This is a question that is not too far away from my mind. We live in such a precarious time at the moment. Where a virus can kill thousands of people by touching them. Nobody is prepared. Everyone is either scared or should be.
Then I remind myself that we are humans. We build. It’s what we do. We build airports. We build homes. We build schools and museums and mausoleums. We build aeroplanes and rockets. We build systems. We build hospitals. We build our future.
So looking to that future, here are two wishes:
Like many around the world we are effectively locked in and self isolating. Family of four confined to our little apartment. Yesterday the weather was incredible and invited us out for a little bit. Having said that we were incredibly conscious of everything the kids touched and of any people within 10m of us.
My favourite quote during this whole time has come from the Italian Foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, who said:
Our grandfathers were drafted to go to war; we’re being asked to stay at home.
Putting everything into context, this is hardly a hardship. It just needs discipline to not go a little bit loopy and remain patient (with everything and everyone) . For my part I have been using this time to reflect and try and come out of this a slightly better person than when we entered this thing.
#StayTheFuckHome. Title says it all.
These social distancing posters by Bix are great. I had never even heard of the term till a few weeks ago, now it’s going to be a way of life for a little while.
Look no further than Our World in Data for the best internet coverage on the Coronavirus. They have been really on this.
Incredible detail for the work that went into localising the deceptively simple and elegant app Currency by Nuno Coelho Santos
That is some of the trippiest weather I’ve experienced in a really long time. Sunny, overcast, hail, rain and I think I saw a few pigs flying as well.
Sometimes the simplest apps hold the most power. Edit for iOS is one of those apps. Was reminded of this app with the release of Tot. This fits my mind more.
Issue 022 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This issue focuses on Energy Vaults, Microlino, hydrogen trains and Zettelkasten.
Dutch PM tells nation not to shake hands — then does. Nobody/nothing is laughing harder than the coronavirus.
Excellent introduction on how the use of colour within a space has a direct impact on how we percieve the space itself - the examples are excellent.
Cardhop has got to be one of the most impressive apps on iOS, it’s actually let me take control of my contacts. Something I have never had any control over. I bought it when it first came out and never used it. Big mistake. I’ve been using it all weekend and it’s an absolute joy to use as it’s taken me down memory lane and made me relive my contacts with so many people. I’ve even started reaching out to a few of them as a result of this clarity. Going forward maintaining the garden is key.
I’ve just realised why I’ve found it hard to keep in contact with a bunch of people, my address book is total garbage - or at least a lot of the information in my address book is either hopelessly out of date, incorrect or non-existent. Good thing I’ve given myself a month to sort all of this out. I see a lot of text messages and emails in my future.
I finally sat down and really thought about how I want to use my iPhone & iPad. Turns out I’ve seriously let my digital garden go completely wild over the last few years. My contacts are all over the place. The less said about my photos the better. My emails accounts are out of hand. My files are in slightly better condition (but even then, it will need some consideration). Thankfully there are some seriously awesome tools made for just this thing. The plan is to try and deal with one area every month.
Top of my list on this journey is Cardhop. These videos for Cardhop by David Sparks is a seriously great introduction to the power behind this deceptively simple looking app.
Great video by Vox explaining why new diseases keep appearing in China and why these may continue to appear. Unlike America’s lack of gun control (which is terrible) affects Americans within their borders. The Chinese government’s policies to not only allow but actively encourage wildlife farming practices (which is awful, even without the addition of disease to the mix), have a significant affect across the entire world. Hopefully world governments can put enough pressure on China to finally put an end to this.
The most dangerous app on my phone, for allowing me to waste my time, is Safari. The most important app on my phone, for allowing me to find out anything, is Safari.
One of the main areas that I feel like I have lost total control over in recent years are my 100s of text files that live across a wide range of folders and within apps. So in the year of consolidation I’ve decided to bring everything under a single roof. I’ve decided on the method, now the hard graft of closing one folder and application at a time begins.
Finally, my credit nightmare is officially over. That took a month to get sorted out. I was able to tie a bunch of other financial loose ends as well, while I was at it. Learnt a ton of hard lessons in the process, but clearly things are decidedly different in Europe. 10 years in the Middle East makes a person forget.
One of my favourite typefaces, Merriweather, has recently (3 months ago is recent in the typeface world) been updated with what appears to be display, wide, narrow and heading variants. Last year in April, small-caps were added as well (in case you missed that update).
What’s interesting is that Google now appears to be funding the efforts of future development - which was news to me. It’s not very well documented anywhere.
Just finished the cover gallery for my newsletter In Abeyance. Writing and drawing this newsletter has been one of the most fun and satisfying projects I’ve ever worked on. Special thanks to @blot for all his help on this.
First day of Unlocking. No better way to celebrate than getting home with the sun blazing brightly across clear blue skies. Tomorrow it might rain or snow or hail; and thats alright to.
What can you say with 2 lines? Turns out, a great deal. Artist Olivia de Recat Perfectly Illustrates How Our Relationships Change Over Time. (Via Recomendo)
This thread on Twitter, regarding the future of the Editorial app for iOS is bittersweet. Even though the app hasn’t been updated (apart from a few maintenance releases) in an age, it’s still an incredibly solid editor - a testament to how advanced the app was compared to others around it. I would say it is still the best app for Dropbox sync, Taskpaper features and Fountain support.
One of the most important parts associated with any app, is it’s longevity, which is the only major ding against lone developers. I love to support them, but at the same time you always run the risk of any number of issues halting future development. In this case it’s clearly not lack of enthusiasm. I do hope everything works out for him and he’s able to work through any issues he’s going through.
And maybe, just maybe he can come back stronger with a future release.
I’ve been really enjoying CJ Chilver’s recent series of posts on one of my favourite subjects, newsletters.
Taking some of the advice in this series, which coincides with my general theme for the year, I’ve now updated the Stet.build website to include a new sign up and about pages.
One of the quotes I recently read in Seth Godin’s book, The Dip, was in the early days of Google:
So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better.
— Sergey Brin
Whenever I add something new to the site, it’s a small step that makes it better for the person who has just discovered the site.
All the pictograms for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics move. So. So. Great.
The new Tot app is a quintessentially Icon Factory app. It’s opinionated software of the highest order. I’m sure it’s got a ton of polish and will serve those that choose to buy it very well. For now it’s not for me, even though one of my favourite hobbies is to buy different text editors.
I really miss my MacBook. I’m a firm believer that using the right tool makes you happier and is therefore more sustainable in the long run. Since September, I have been relegated to using my iPad Pro exclusively for all my needs. In some ways, it has been both a revelation and joy to use. In other respects, it has been abject misery.
Where the iPad shines for me is it’s portability. This thing is incredibly light. Solidly built and has an incredible battery that keeps on going and going. The fact that the pencil is magnetically attached to the top means it’s always charged and ready to go. All in all, it is definitely the road warrior that I imagined it to be. I opted for the 12.9" version, which is right for me, in most cases. It gets a bit big when I write notes, but this is mainly a mindset thing that I need to get past and work into my routine.
While this isn’t perfect, I use this with two keyboards. One by Apple and it’s perfect and the other by Logitech and it works great at work as I need to flip between a Windows machine and my iPad. The only issue I’ve ever really had is that sometimes support across various apps has been pretty buggy recently. Most notably with iAWriter, the keyboard goes haywire if I switch between apps. Its restored only when I restart the app.
Apps like GoodNotes, Procreate, iFontMaker, Stop Motion Pro, and PDFExpert truly shine on this machine in a way that other apps cannot. There are the apps that have been adapted exceptionally well. iA Writer. Soulver. Drafts. Affinity’s Photos and Designer work surprisingly well but they falter by the limitations of the iPad’s poor support of a mouse which is where these types of apps shine.
Then there are the apps that don’t exist on the platform. The Archive. Affinity say that they are working on a version for their Publisher app, but until then, creating books isn’t really all that possible - sure there is Pages…but I mean, c’mon guys. It’s called an iPad Pro. No Web Developer tools of note. The ones available are barely ok, but certainly not as powerful as what already comes with desktop safari.
This is something that I have noticed a sharp addition of bugs for iOS13. It’s not been great. Everything from dictionary support to weird and wonderful bugs with the keyboard support. As this is my main machine for production, it’s frustrating.
Yes, you can have your own fonts installed, except for some reason, it’s only through third party apps (none of which are very good). Why the hell isn’t this baked into the OS?
I know it’s fashionable to pile onto the iPad at the moment. The truth is that it wouldn’t take very much for me not to pine over my macbook.
The thing that would be the real game changer for me is if the 3rd party developers are enticed to actually develop real productivity software for the platform. I’d love to see ports of Mac apps on iOS. Make it happen Apple. It’s the sort of crazy shit Steve Jobs would ask for. This would allow me to have The Archive, Hemingway, Highland, Marsedit and any number of other great Mac apps that I have already paid for and currently have no way to use.
After 10 years without access to formula one, living in Europe opens this possibility up again with F1 TV. I might keep my €110 this year, as it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a vintage year, based on practice sessions and the expected dominance of the Mercedes machine. Next year however, things might be different with the new rules.
Having Drafts act as my conduit into Micro.blog makes me wonder if there is a way for it to act as a way out as well. Not sure if the APIs allow it, but ideally I’d want to import all my posts from Micro.blog. Somehow the meta data would have to be preserved. I don’t need to download the images, just the markdown text….
Ok, basically I want MarsEdit for iOS dammit - without the image support.
In another ding against iCloud, if you find that files you created in iAWriter on your iPhone are not syncing to your iPad (something that has been happening regularly since September), the trick is to open the Files app on your phone, which will then coax iCloud to wake up and take the new information created. OneDrive hasn’t been great either. Say what you will about Dropbox, but those guys have always had sync down to an art.
Issue 021 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out now and shines the spotlight on drones. This one was fun to research but tough to write about because of the sheer volume of information around the subject.
So my daily photo posting (part of the Micro.blog February challenge) came to an end one week before the end of the month. A bit annoying but I’ve been pretty swamped recently and it just escaped me. Better luck next time.
The latest issue of In Abeyance is totally kicking my ass this weekend. I’m nearly there, but I have been totally overwhelmed by the volume of information. Didn’t think this subject would be so expansive, but once I jumped in, I realised it was an entire world I knew nothing about. Should hopefully go live tomorrow sometime.
I have found that deciding what to read next usually kills my reading momentum. It’s not for lack of books available to read, those I have in abundance. So here are the books I plan on reading this year:
If I finish (a big if) these, then I will try and finish the following:
I orginally didn’t really give Drafts a fair shake. It wasn’t until I tried it on the iPad that I finally understood where it can fit into my text writing life - specifically it makes for a great Micro.blog editor.
This particular editor is in many ways the antithesis of my preferred editor iAWriter. Where iAWriter gives you some customisation options, these are very considered. Drafts goes the other way and basically lets you control just about every aspect of the editor.
I’ve not gone for the pro version just yet, as I’m trying to see how/if this thing has legs for me.
This drone footage of Wuhan is soo eerie…even without the music (via Subtraction)
✏️ Somehow I completely missed the Musgrave Pencil Company rebranding. Total transformation by Nicole and Tim Delger.
📚 Finally finished reading Binti yesterday night. It’s been a really long time since I’ve not been able to put a story down, ‘school night’ be damned.
Finally, Better Call Saul Season 5.
It would seem that my iTunes account has been compromised. Damn it’s been rough since the afternoon. Need to wait 24-48 hours as it’s been escalated within Apple. Such a nightmare.
Being in a country and a city that isn’t scared of public displays of affection (even ones as simple as holding hands) is something that’s both surprising and refreshing at the same time. Loads of couples out and about Copenhagen this evening. Happy ❤️ Day everyone.
Big day when sunrise is before 8am and sunset is after 5pm. Can you feel it? Winter is nearly over and we start unlocking.
Issue 020 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. This issue is about blade graveyards, cities and roads.
Truly fascinating episode of Hidden Brain, regarding the use of clickers to teach humans. I’ve been going through the frustrations described here as I try and teach my five year old different things. I’ve realised that with Zane he sometimes has to learn from his own mistakes, as no amount of talking will do that. The latest is how to hold and use a pencil. It’s not until he’s started to develop a calus on his hand (from drawing!) that he is considering listening about maybe changing the way he holds the pencil.
He’s also been using the term “I can’t” a lot recently, which I try and discourage by telling him that he hasn’t even tried yet. I should change my approach, as I clearly lack some empathy of understanding what he’s going through.
Every once in a while you need a reset day. Just take stock of everything. Clean up the house. Make some home made granola. Get around to all the little things that pile up over a month that you keep meaning to get around to but never do.
I really like Nancy Pelosi. She really is bad ass and arguably the perfect foil to the 🍊. Take her response on tearing up the speech.
I didn’t want to believe this day would come to pass. I didn’t want to believe that a majority of the British people thought that being European was such an unwanted part of their lives. Yet here we are. For my part, I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy being European.
Like many, I am following the Coronavirus. This is sadly only the start of humanity bearing its racist teeth, out of fear. A virus does not see Chinese, Arab, French, Spanish, American or Cambodian. These are all human constructs. Unlike us, the virus only sees human.
Seriously America, get the 🍊 out of the White House. He exemplifies everything that is wrong with the political world today and he keeps trying to make it worse. Back to your reality TV show. Begone!
A big 🖕 to the Chinese government for trying to put political pressure on other nations to assimilate to their censorship hive mind. It’s rejected outright.
Totally missed this. Cursed is a book by Thomas Wheeler and Frank Miller. Looks awesome, and of course is coming to Netflix. Of course.
We are only at the very start of the tragedy that is the Coronavirus. The response by the Chinese Government could only work in China. Take the live view of the construction site of Wuhan’s coronavirus hospital. Scheduled to be open on the 3rd of February.
One of the clearest data points in our transition to Denmark is the nearly complete shift from eating out on a regular basis to eating exclusively from home. Slowly we have been adding different types of foods to our cooking repetoire. Yasmine’s been getting into baked muffins in a big way, as she continues to experiments with all kinds of ingredients.
From my side, I finally attempted and mostly landed the ever ellusive potato bun for a hamburger. If like me you are a burger connosieur, you understand that the bun makes the burger. You’re very liable to forgive a lot more of what goes inside the burger, but if the bun isn’t right, then the whole thing falls apart.
The receipe I would totally recommend is the this one by Food Wishes. When I first heard Chef John, I thought this is a joke right? His tone grows on you and then the humour comes in, which is a nice touch. The only part I will be tweaking is the amount of yeast. I’ll be using 1½ teaspoons rather than the recommended 2½ as it smelt too yeasty for our liking. The other part is that I think the buns could be a little larger, so maybe use halves rather than quarters.
The other video I would recommend is the one about making a Shake Shack burger. It’s a classic burger where less is more.
Isssue 019 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, The Circular Economy. This one has a lot of noise and material being generated for it. Definitely a topic to watch for how it moves in the future.
I’ve been wanting to capture our nomadic lifestyle in a series of maps on our wall. This might be just the answer I was looking for - (via Daring Fireball)
One of the things that I have been enjoying observing are all the winter costumes that people wear. Being in the Gulf for a decade has meant that scarves, coats, jackets, hats (woolly or otherwise) have not been part of my visual landscape.
🧁 So today the guys introduced me to the most ridiculously decadent pastry, even by Danish standards, the Fastelavn bun. Ridiculous. And like the porker that I am, I ate the whole damn thing. Don’t judge.
🍵 Finally got myself some Kukicha and Hojicha tea. Slightly more expensive than what I’m use to but it looks like some proper quality tea right here - certainly more fresh. Just need a more romantic way of steeping and serving it.
We needed something light and uplifting, so we decided to watch The Durrells. Still making our way through season one. Love Spiros (because he reminds me of many Greeks) and the youngest boy reminds us of Zane, because of his obsession with animals.
☕️ I know Christmas is over but I have a few cups left of my Christmas tea blend left - you know the one, cinnamon, almonds, nutmeg, white tea, black tea, cranberry blend. Works just as well on a nice crisp winters day.
Maybe it’s the free access to Spotify again (even though I used to pay for Apple Music) and the way the music is presented (not just albums but playlists), but music has reclaimed an important part of my life again, that was practically on hold for the last decade. I missed it.
The research period of an article is always a series of rabbit holes and dead ends. Every once in a while you stumbled on a topic or idea that screams to be expanded or elaborated on. Most times you meander in the digital wilderness letting the topic wash over you.
Back in 2014, feeling that Facebook was not making me happy and after the initial euphoria of ‘connecting’ with old friends and family wore off, I decided to leave the platform. Knowing all too well that Instagram was part of Facebook, I reluctantly stayed on the platform because I liked my grid of photos. I knew that it wasn’t going to be a sustainable solution for me.
Thankfully I didn’t need to wait an exceedingly long time for a better solution to come along. That solution was Micro.blog, which today marks two years since I first started using the service.
As the platform and it’s tools, have developed the way I use it has also changed, from mainly on the desktop to mainly on mobile. This year I would like to contribute something more to this service (I have a couple of ideas). Needless to say that I heartily recommend you consider it as your place on the web.
Fresh smoothie in the morning by the wife? Win. Nearly 40% off the commuter pass when compared to the card price? Win. See some awesome Spider-Man graffiti on the side of a train (I mean seriously awesome)? Win. Little wins. They all add up.
For a long while now the length of day mattered very little to me. Day Length puts a small smile on my face as I see the number slowly creep up. Can’t wait till the 20th of March when we smoke everyone south of us.
When we first moved to Denmark, we ended up buying a few books on the iPad as it was easily accessible. The clear standout stories were the Rabbit & Bear series. Like music that reminds you of a person, this book will always remind us of our 1st weeks in Copenhagen. Perfect.
13 places to find Beautiful Free Illustrations (via the excellent For the Interested newsletter).
Issue 018 of my In Abeyance newsletter is out. For Volume 2, I’ve gone for purple.
Finally reading The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday. Super light read (which I’m not complaining about), but have found myself discovering more of my city every day.
Completely childish I know but the current POTUS (President of the United States) is totally one. Or what goes in one?
As I put the finishing touches (still need to draw the cover) for issue 018 for In Abeyance, I was reminded that I announced the newsletter a year ago today. It’s easily been one of the most satisfying projects I’ve ever worked on. Still in its infancy and only starting to learn how to walk.
It’s funny how you can quickly and effortlessly get used to something. Case in point is the use of a much larger daily phone. I just picked up my work phone (an ailing 6S) and was shocked at how quaintly svelte it was. This was a phone that 4½ years ago I named ‘Galactus’.
For all of the criticism laid on Twitter, yesterday I was reminded of its reach and network effect. A single tweet from a reader added the number of subscribers for In Abeyance by around 50%. One single tweet. Amazing really.
I’ve been meaning to do some Asian cooking at home. These videos by Adam Liaw are the perfect introduction. Excellent production values. Easy to understand steps. My only concern is trying to find all the necessary ingredient out here in Denmark might be a bit of a struggle - only because I don’t know where to find them.
The single biggest change anyone can make to their site is sorting out the typography. There are plenty of freely available typefaces out there. My favourites are IBM Plex (Sans Serif, Serif and Mono), Inter (Sans Serif), Merriweather (Sans Serif and Serif) and Source Sans and Source Serif, Charter (Serif) & Clear Sans (Sans Serif).
The issue is that because they are freely available, they offer little distinction as they can be used by everyone. Sometimes that’s what you want. Sometimes it’s not. If I was running an up and coming blogging platform (ahem @manton), I’d try and hook up with indie typographers. People like Matthew Butterick, Mika Melvas or even a foundary like TipoType. See if I can strike some kind of deal to allow everyone to use their fonts across my platform.
Saving this to be devoured later. Guide to Internal Communication, the Basecamp Way
“Explain this to me Martin. Why is the cheese in Denmark so soft? Every time I go to slice it with a knife, it just sticks to the knife or worse crumples up.”
“You’re using the wrong tool. We solved this in the 60s.”
He then introduced me to the OSTI cheese slicer. Brilliant.
Woke up this morning to the news of the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. I fear that shit just got very real. We will not feel the ramifications of this action until much later. The truth is, all my fear about putting the 🍊 one in the White House are starting to materialise.
I think it’s important to remember that this current wave of escalation all began with America pulling out of the Iran Nuclear deal that used diplomacy rather than drones to control the situation. That was the action of someone who doesn’t understand international diplomacy and still lives in the 1950s. None of this was necessary. None of what is likely going to happen was necessary. If you think that this is the end of it and that Iran won’t do something in retaliation, then clearly you’ve not been paying much attention.
This report from Arup presenting four plausible futures scenarios of the world in 2050 is a great way to assess what our actions (or inactions) could mean in the future.
2019 was the year of release was one that set up foundations for a lot of the projects I wanted to focus on. I had been working on these projects at different stages in the previous years. The intention of this year was to stop working in the background and start to release as many of these as possible.
Using this guiding principle, I was able to issue the following:
Following the Cortex podcast idea of yearly themes, 2019 was my year of Release. I think overall the theme served me well as I tried to keep releasing ideas, projects large and small throughout the year, regardless of what was happening around me, which admittedly was a lot.
Did I release everything that I wanted? In some cases I actually released more. In other respects I didn’t achieve everything that I was hoping, but that is the point of the yearly theme. It’s not a resolution, it’s an idea to guide me through the year.
2020 is the year of Consolidation and will not have major new releases. Rather it will be building upon the blocks that I have established already - namely all things Stet.Build and everything on kaa.bz. I’m excited for the coming year.
🧨 Happy New Year everyone.
P.S To all the Danes that have gone absolutely batshit crazy with the fireworks tonight I want to salute you and slap you at the same time. Easily the craziest display of fireworks I have ever experienced (continue to experience). It’s fucking 🥜.
I noticed that my wife was spending time on WhatsApp sharing thoughts, ideas and links. So for Christmas this year I set her up with a Micro.blog site in the hopes she would see the value in owning her stuff.
Ah FFS. A few days before Christmas the internet turned off (hopefully getting fixed tomorrow). Christmas Eve and day we had fun plumbing issues (shower then toilet). Now the stove just went flash, pop and stopped working. That’s it, right house?
Locking season is definitely over and we have finally entered Winter in Denmark. Today was insane cold - don’t judge I’ve been out in the desert for 10 years. My Patagonia jacket came out and now I understand what all the fuss has been about. This thing is insanely well built.
I cannot get over that blue sky. We’ve not seen it very often in recent weeks but it really is beautiful.
Issue 017 and the last issue of the year (and volume one) of my newsletter In Abeyance is now out. The title of this issue is ‘Green Concrete’.
Just stumbled onto Yale E360. Possibly the best looking website I’ve seen in a long time. Fitting as the content seems absolutely rock solid. A real internet gem.
I used to have a Spotify account 10 years ago. I’m giving it a go again instead of music. The random Scandinavian ads are surprisingly not annoying - likely because I don’t understand what they are saying so it might as well be a radio station I don’t understand.
Off I went to the different hardware stores in Copenhagen, in search of drills, drill bits, fixings and nails. Totally worth it for the smile on my own dad’s face when I told him. I think he considers it a rite of passage. That and owning a Volvo — which is never going to happen.
The Winter Solstice hasn’t really meant very much to me for the past decade. It certainly does now and more importantly, it’s today. Today is the shortest day and the start of gaining more light every single day.
If you’re into coffee and want something that can really bring some more flavour to your brew, you have 8 hours left to back the Coffeejack on Kickstarter.
I’ve left the digital garden go completely unattended while I try to sort out my real life. Thankfully the holidays are upon us, so can get some time to regroup & recharge.
TENET trailer, you had me at Syncopy. This looks like a mix between The Matrix and Memento. Can’t wait.
Ok pretty annoyed I didn’t get a pic of the dude roller-skiing on the bridge in front of me. Never seen that before.
My first authentic Danish meal. All the ingredients are known and familiar to me, however certainly not the way they were combined. Not a fan of how the herring is presented. Big fan of the oat, almond, cherry desert.
No idea why I keep doing this to myself. I’ve finally upgraded my phone from a 6S, which served me very faithfully for 4 years. This last month has been exceptionally rough as the battery on iOS 13 has made the phone practically unusable.
I went for the iPhone 11, as I am likely going to have to drop some more cash in the new year for a MacBook to replace my 6 year old brick with a broken logic board.
The size of this screen will take a little getting used to, but I’m sure I’ll get through that hardship 🤣.
So many great little features to appreciate, but to be honest it’s all about these cameras. It kinda reminds me of my beloved Kodak camera from over a decade ago. That camera was way ahead of its time. Hopefully this means I’ll start taking photos again.
Sometimes you have to look at things from a slightly different angle to make them work for you. My biggest gripe with the templates available for GoodNotes is that they ‘forced’ my handwriting to be bigger. These Dot grid templates have made me excited to use this type of notebook. So much so I’m going to be making templates of my own.
Setting up a house is pretty hard work. Setting up a home is even more difficult. Each steps brings you closer but when there are 1000 different things to do, it can get a little overwhelming. I keep reminding myself that in 6 months time these issues will be an amusing aside.
If you publish on the internet you should watch Sacha Baron Cohen’s keynote address at ADL’s 2019 summit.
I’m not going to try and hide my disappointment with how the British people chose to vote. Make no mistake this was not a normal election. This was a vote on whether you want to be part of something bigger or not. The people chose not.
I’ve toyed with writing a book called Parent Like A Librarian, which would have a very simple premise: Most parents conceive of themselves as teachers when they would be much better off thinking of themselves as librarians who provide their children with the time, space, materials, and resources to grow into whatever they want to become.
— Austin Kleon
This part really resonated with me.
I’ve seen a great number of people struggling with finding their voice online. They clearly want to have a presence online but don’t know what to say, or more over they loose the momentum for themselves and end up reposting things or being passive clients scrolling and reading.
I know I had that exact same problem and I honestly think it’s a missed opportunity. So here are two reasons why you should publish your voice online.
The gift for your current self is really to help you develop a new skill. A skill that shows up regularly to do something for yourself. That lets you gain some clarity to your thoughts and your writing that is not meant for your own consumption. The most basic of skills is being able to write and communicate ideas. These skills are needed in every single walk of life. Having a personal site allows you to develop those skills day in and day out. Over time you will be able to get your point across faster and more succinctly.
You might think that you are writing this website for others, but actually if others engage with it that’s just a bonus. That should not be the reason you do this.
Rather, think of your personal site as a present you’re giving yourself 5 years into the future. 10 years. 20 years. You are cataloguing events that meant something to you. Thoughts that were important to you at the time. It’s a time capsule that you wrote and documented. You won’t get to really enjoy and appreciate it till a little later.
One of the questions that is then asked is, why publish it at all? Why not just put it in any type of app for journaling. Different bucket. You fill every bucket differently. The type of things that you write on your site are thoughts, ideas, that you can enjoy in the future. Your journal are is there to try and help you work things out in your daily life. It’s a fine line to walk, but once you have worked it out you’ll appreciate that they are two different things.
It’s Ryan’s birthday today. He’s turned 2. I realised that I may not have written how he was born. Having only experienced his brother’s birth 3 years earlier, I was somewhat expecting a difficult affair. The hospital sent us back home a few times. When Yasmine was officially and totally done, we drove at a reasonable pace to the hospital where we were informed that she was really at the end. I ambled downstairs to the car, called my brother to tell him it was all about to begin and went upstairs.
Yasmine was getting in more pain very quickly. We were discussing epidurals (I was all in favour). Yasmine, as she is want to do, was questioning it all. The nurse patiently told us to wait as the doctor was around and she would come take a look and advise. Doctor came, she was 8cm dilated (i.e. very close). No time for epidural, the baby was coming out very soon. 20 minutes later he was out.
It’s been a different adventure than what we went though with Zane but Ryan’s been a great baby, now a proper toddler. Here’s to many more little guy.
While in Singapore this year I tried Mazamen noodles and they blew my mind. Definitely recommend them. If you can’t find them near your abode, try this recipe - the picture is pretty much what I remember devouring.
My Mac died on me a couple of months ago. I’ve been iPad only since then. The thing is if it was reversed I would have gone out and replaced my iPad almost immediately. One of the reasons? I use Procreate for all my artwork. Procreate 5 is out now, and it’s amazing.
It only dawned on me after seeing a couple ‘best of the decade’ lists that we are saying goodbye to the tens and entering the roaring twenties in a few weeks time.
I lambasted Google for tracking and advertising…turns out the culprit was likely Apple. iOS 13 Settings To Turn Off Now video is a real eye opener. So much is buried in the menu and should be off by default. @gruber you should really write about this shit.
💤 I’m soo exhausted. Can’t honestly remember the last time I was this tired from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. Thankfully this day went pretty much as planned. Tomorrow will be fun.
Today is moving day. After 3½ months of disruption we finally have a place with all our creature comforts.
Issue 016 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. I have found that I am oftentimes looking to the future and highlighting the road we need to take or make happen. In this issue, I want to bring some positive vibes and put the spotlight on where we have already made progress and projects that showcase built design at its best.
Next issue will be the last for 2019.
Great evening today between 3 dads, with very different stories to tell, comparing ideas and thoughts on how things are going and what the journey has taught us all. Really loved it and recommend it to anyone else going through the transformation that is parenthood themselves.
Took the wrong bloody train to the hotel didn’t I. Luckily it wasn’t so bad. I will say that I am really starting to appreciate Danish transportation elegance more and more. Maybe because the city is more human in scale I can appreciate certain elements more - while in larger cities the scale demands more complexity?
On my way to Amsterdam for the first time. They confiscated my razor blades, I kinda anticipated that this might happen, which is why I bought some sacrificial ones. CPH Airport is a good looking building. The water in the bathroom taps is freezing, which I also liked.
Been listening to the The Happiness Lab this weekend. Love the topic, love the music (which has an 80s gaming vibe). Another excellent production from the folks at Pushkin Industries.
Writing The Mark was a really interesting and unfamiliar process to me. First of all it was written as a narrative, while all my previous works of fiction were written as scripts intended for being made into comics. This was obviously a very different muscle that I had to use. For example I didn’t know how to format dialogue (even though I’ve thousands of line of dialogue), I ended up referring back to this page time and time again throughout the month. Apart from the mechanics there is also a question of flow and structure. Two elements I really only considered in the most superficial manner. I will be revisiting the story to see what I did wrong and how I can improve.
One of the limitations I included (constraint is the mother of all creativity), was to the daily word count to around 50 words. This constraint allowed me to peck out the story predominantly on my iPhone. Every night after work I would take 5-10 minutes and just type something out. Having the bar so low meant that I was able to do achieve my goal every night, even when I was busy, or tired or had a headache.
As the process moved forward I finally realised that this was the perfect way to move several fiction ideas that I have had serious brain crack over. So that’s what I’m going to be doing. As an experiment I’m going to see if I can move a story that I’ve had in different stages, 50 words at a time. The thing is I also think that my site isn’t really the perfect place to show the work as it progresses, rather to showcase completed chapters. So I’ll be writing it on a service I’ve been looking for the right project to try out. So I’ll be running a new newsletter that has nothing in it but text (eventually a little logo) that I will hopefully publish to on a daily basis. Once a chapter is written then I’ll publish that on the site.
Why publish it at all? Part of it is building accountability and movement behind something that I otherwise won’t touch. It’s also a break that my creative brain needs in addition to the work that I carry out over on Stet.Build
Throughout November I have been writing a story daily (a micro version of NaNoWriMo). It’s called The Mark and you can read the entire story (along with the last installment) at it’s dedicated page.
The Dezeen gift guide for architects and designers is on point. Plenty of really great (and expensive) stuff on this list.
Odysseus opened his eyes. He was in the Agora sat next to Helen. She looked over, half hoping that his plan would fail. He gave her a knowing smile, nodded and without saying a word got up and left the Mark forever.
How to Read a Book a Day. I’m definitely going to be giving this a go for my next book.
The gathen tried to resist the new host but it didn’t matter. Odysseus had taken full control of Asteer’s mind. His memories. Every part of his consciousness was malleable to any suggestion. Asteer’s mind would remain dormant. Odysseus made the jump out of Helen’s mind.
Bollocks. It’s the logicboard. While the price to fix it is pretty steep, it’s still a lot less than outright buying a new machine. Thing is, it’s a 6 year old machine. Need some perspective from everyone. Worth repairing or should I just call it quits.
Odysseus approached Asteer purposefully, his arm extended, aimed at Asteer’s gathen. ‘This is going to hurt,’ he said ‘a lot.’ Odysseus then began to slice the gathen from Asteer’s head. The pain all but consumed Asteer who faded in and out of consciousness. Lying on the ground, the last thing he saw before completely blacking out was Odysseus grafting the gathen onto himself.
Still don’t like the look of this….truck…but the Tesla’s cybertruck comes with pop-up camper configuration — which looks even more ridiculous. The proposed trailer however looks awesome — you know, for a trailer.
Took my MacBook to the store to get fixed. Fingers crossed it’s a simple thing and not the motherboard. Quick update on using the iPad Pro as a MacBook replacement - it’s utter misery. While the iPad excels at drawing and marking up, it’s bollocks for coding/debugging website designs and publishing a newsletter. It can be done. It’s just a total ball ache - something you can put squarely on the software not the hardware.
‘They use extraction to take what they want, breaking our minds and bodies in the process. No more. We’ve worked out how to travel between our minds without causing damage. We will hide Applonia inside your head and lure them there. You will act as our trap. Whomever they send will act as our escape vessel.’ He paused and took another drink, ‘Oh and one last thing. Your daughter goes last.’
‘Centuries and a new reality haven’t changed you. You’re still a self centred son of a bitch. How does any of this help my daughter?’ said Helen. Odysseus poured himself more wine, ‘To survive, your daughter has to find refuge inside your mind. Her existence is an aberration in this world. As they cannot control it, they have decided to finish it. To help you get Applonia inside your head we need something from you in exchange.’
Really loving Harley-Davidson’s latest electric bikes. The commuter bike is bold and elegant in a way that the newly revealed Tesla Cybertruck isn’t.
‘Since this place came to be, they have been treating us like common farm animals. They offer us their latest techniques and technologies as though they are a gift. Only to mine our ideas. Our thoughts,' Odysseus took a large swig of wine and continued ‘I was born to discover. I cannot be contained. Ever.’
Google thinks that it’s being clever by using Google Maps to then feed me targeted ads on YouTube but it’s actually alienating. So until I properly test out Apple Maps as a viable alternative I’m turning off the microphone access (and everything else).
Helen sat down directly opposite Odysseus. The table was adorned by a purple cloth, with golden trim. Even across centuries, some wounds are hard forgotten or forgiven. Odysseus poured himself a glass of wine. ‘Thanks for coming, it has been a while,’ he said. She offered a thin smile. ‘I’ll get right to it then. I know that Applonia is dying. I can save her.’
A couple of years ago I stopped buying Field Notes until I had used up the majority of what I had. This last year’s worth of Field Note releases has definitely tested this decision. I’ve found myself filling the cart with all the books and then closing the tab.
‘What have you done to my gathen? How are you doing this?’ said a more composed Asteer. ‘How indeed.’ Odysseus offered cooly. He turned to Applonia, knelt down, his eyes level with hers. He seemed to be trying to reassure her. Applonia looked defiant. Unflinching. Odysseus got up, faced Asteer, pointed his glowing knife straight at him.
Odysseus waved his hand in front of Asteer who suddenly found himself screaming out, ‘RELEASE ME RIGHT NOW.’ Odysseus paid him no heed and unsheathed a knife from his belt which began to glow a bright red. ‘You are in no position to demand anything. When you have served your purpose you will meet the same fate as all those spectres you’ve terminated.’
I was kindly reminded that I haven’t posted about the latest issue of In Abeyance. Issue 015 is out now and it’s all about Batteries. Subscribe here if you like the good kind of email.
Applonia was now standing right in front of him. Even though he had monitored her his entire life, this was the closest he’d ever been to her…even though this wasn’t real, right? ‘A magician with a single trick. You would expect the audience to see right through you. Then again Helen is a much better looking package than that wooden horse.’
Helen of Troy had a daughter with Isaac Newton. They named her Applonia. She was the first child born in the Mark. The event warranted her own dedicated minder, an honour that fell to Asteer . When her surveillance signal had stopped, he had been given simple instructions, ‘Find her. Bring her back. Don’t come back until you’ve done both.’
And like that I’m 14 years old again, video game console logos. I’ve always been a Sega man. The Mega Drive and Dreamcast logos especially put a massive smile on my face.
This article, The Secret to Enjoying a Long Winter, by Jason Kottke couldn’t come at a better time for me. In our new reality the sun sets at 4pm and will continue to drop till the winter solstice (22nd of December). We need recalibrate our mindset to the norms of this place.
He tried to move but his feet didn’t respond. He tried to communicate with his gathen but it also was silent. All around him was nothingness. Bright. The silhouettes became clearer. A man and a child…a girl. The man walked straight up to Asteer and whispered, ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’
Apart from the great artwork, the latest episode of The Erasable Podcast has a great conversation regarding NaNoWriMo. Hearing the guys express the same issues you may be experiencing with your own novel somehow makes everything easier.
So today I finally moved all my site analytics to Plausible. Another small step to supporting the one man bands on the internet that make things for us (individuals), not them (companies).
Entering the mind of a spectre was a particularly disconcerting experience. You were subjected to a cacophony of whispers of every tone and intensity. Something was definitely not right. Asteer stood still. It was completely silent. He could no longer feel his gathen. In the distance he could make out silhouettes approaching him.
This November, as part of the Micro.blog community, a series of prompts were published every day by Jean. My idea was to use some of these prompts and write a novella. The constraint was to remain with roughly 50 words per day. I have allowed myself the opportunity to go back and edit previous instalments as the story develops.
I will hopefully collate them all with a few sketches. Today is the halfway point of the story, so if you want to catch up, head over to the dedicated category page
The Mark was created to be where ideas were farmed from the greatest minds that ever existed. Rules were created to ensure that none of the spectres had any illusions that they were in control. As expected, some couldn’t accept that. This had lead to organised culls being used as an example to deter others.
‘Do what you must,’ submitted Helen. He touched her shoulder. Time stopped. All of reality collapsed into this moment. It felt like every nerve in his body had been set alight. He had no reference any more. The journey could have taken seconds or all of eternity. He was now inside her mind.
I’ve been slowly working through all the various architectural houses that exist in Denmark (and there are many). One project that has really stood out from all that I have seen, is something called ‘The Whale’. Absolutely stunning.
Definitely feel like my mental health is better when I get to sit down and write for an hour or so every morning. I fell out of the habit recently on account of everything that’s been happening in our life but happily this muscle is starting to be flexed again.
Basecamp Personal launched. I used the old personal version 8 years ago. Really excited about this again.
Actually finding it hard to wake up at my usual time early in the morning - probably because it’s soo flipping cold. It’s had a knock on effect on my writing which is typically done before the family is awake.
See I would actually trade my beloved K380 for this one. You had me at backlit keys…
Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration is now at the top of my reading list - via Recomendo
She sat next to him on the bench and gave a hesitant smile. ‘Not sure how much assistance I can be,' she said. ‘I have no idea how she managed to leave the Mark,’ she continued without prompting. Asteer knew not to believe her, theatre was just part of the process in this division.
Part 10.
👶🏼 Ah yes. I remember this period in a young child’s life. Beware parents the terrible twos…they are truly awful. Good thing kids a cute.
This place had gotten its name after those who had left their mark on the world. How that was decided was not clear nor particularly important. One look at her was enough for Asteer to understand why she was here. Helen of Sparta. ‘Yes. Breathtaking,’ he managed.
Asteer understood why he was anxious. Only a fool ignores his gathen. He finally made his way to the agora, sat on an empty bench and looked up into the night. The sky was peppered with stars. Time rotated. Eras merged. ‘Breathtaking isn’t it?’ He looked across and knew straight away that it was the key.
For years I’ve always felt that my stories should be developed into comics. I had never even considered writing them into short novels, written in 50 word chunks. The exercise this week has really opened my eyes to another fun way of telling a story. Even trying to include a word prompt has offered an interesting challenge. Will definitely be expanding on this for new stories that had been shelved.
As detailed in soo many places, constraints truly are a remarkable way of feeding creativity.
Without a gathen no visit to a division was even possible. It’s what grounds you and acts as both a guide and interpreter. It attaches onto your ear and then continues to grow inside your head. Once a gathen latched, it becomes a permanent part of you. You felt what it felt. Asteer’s gathen was frightened.
It was hard to tell how long it would take to reach the Hellenistic division. Exits didn’t always stick. Time was not absolute. Rather it meandered. Overlapped. Flexed. Like a Möbius strip. It was hard to tell how long it would take to reach the Hellenistic division…
Late Nite Harp is a magical podcast from fellow Micro.blogger, Holly.
It didn’t matter how many times he walked between divisions. The experience always left him in awe. There were extraordinary meetings on every street. There was Salvador Dalí playing chess against Boudicca. Beyond them, on a bench was Che Guevara sharing a pipe with Antonio Vivaldi.
🛴 Took a scooter home today, nearly ate the pavement during a detour due to some roadworks. Hairy moment I wasn’t expecting.
Entry wasn’t guaranteed as there was always the possibility that your mind might break. Across the Grand Arrivals Hall was evidence of those who hadn’t made it. Asteer opened his chamber, strode out confidently and headed straight for the Hellenistic division to meet the key.
Asteer stepped across the threshold. Whenever you entered the Mark your perceptions are under assault. Your entire life got played out infinitely; cycling through how it all could have gone differently. He didn’t fancy this part. It was however a small price for the privalege to congregate with humans across time and space.
Something was still bothering him. The gathen in his left ear started to burn. His body tensed, his awareness amplified. He centered his thoughts and approached the counter purposefully. The official looked up, smiled wryly and said, ‘Welcome back to the Mark, Mr.Asteer.’
1/2019.
The flight felt long. Likely because he was feeling anxious. The weather was fair. This gave him a glimpse of the island from the tiny glider window. The view lasted seconds but gave a perspective Vii maps failed to convey. Hopefully the key was waiting for him on the other side.
Got stopped on the way home by two guys who turn out they were from a local church. By the end of our conversation I was selling them on Stoic philosophy suggesting they read some Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus.
I’ve been spending my walking time listening to Pimsleur Danish. It’s taken a real hit on my podcast listening which has all but stopped. Alas you can’t consume everything all the time.
📚 Just finished reading Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. Glad I made it all the way to the end but it was tough reading. Not because it was badly written but because much of the subject matter was hitting a raw nerve. Need something a little lighter for my next read.
This really hit home for me.
‘Some of that $3.8 billion should go right now into humanitarian aid in Gaza.’ — @BernieSanders who would like to divert some of Israel’s military aid to help Palestinians
I’d completely forgotten about this graphic representation of my RSS feed on Feedbin. It’s the kind of stat I wish was part of Micro.blog, along with how many consecutive posts i’ve strung together, how many photos i’ve posted, how many articles I’ve written, what was the longest article I’ve written. Fun stats that only I would even mildly care about.
Add Citationsy as another one of those micro-businesses that deserve some attention. Definitely looking to try and support this as I work on my articles.
3°C. That is what Siri told me after I asked what the weather was like. As a tourist that just put a smile on my face. I’ve not felt that in a really long time.
Got duped into cycling for 12km (there and back). Going there I definitely felt this was a bad idea before a meeting. I’ve cycled more in the last three weeks than I’ve cycled in the last 20 years. Definitely makes for a more active lifestyle.
I didn’t want to update my about page with our new location as a family, until they were with me. Casa Khaled is now full. Missed these guys so much.
Yes is More. is an architectural manifesto by Bjarke Ingels (BIG), done in the form of a comic book. Ok, how did I not know this existed?
Also, after 10 years of not being particularly critical about a place, it’s nice to be able to voice an opinion about something…anything without fear of reprocussions. Dammit I want to take this up with my local Kommune and explain that this is just not acceptable. The only reason I don’t is because I’m 99% sure I’ll be moving to a different part of town within the next few weeks. Apathy isn’t going to help the planet is it…
Today I had my first disappointment in Copenhagen. I’ve been collecting my paper, cans, plastic and glass to take to the recycling bins. Sadly near our house, I could only find a location for paper and glass bottles. When I opened the paper bin, it was filled with regular rubbish.
My Danish colleagues inform me that this is certainly not the case throughout the city (or country) and that sometimes it does differ from neighborhood to neighborhood. It broke my heart a little bit because if they can’t get recycling right in Copenhagen, then honestly what chance does the rest of humanity stand?
It’s official, family will be arriving in Copenhagen tomorrow. Super excited for them to see the autumn leaves as they slowly fall of the trees. I’m also looking forward to seeing this city through my sons’ eyes, it’s one of the joys of being a parent and doing the things we do.
Just finished watching the first episode of Our Planet. David Attenborough could read his shopping list and I’d be attentive to his every word. I’ve missed these epic nature programmes (still haven’t seen Blue Planet II).
First time on the Metro in Copenhagen. I’m liking it. The trains have the same exact sound as the ones in Athens, a sort of futuristic whurrrr.
I’ve fallen out of a really important habit recently that I absolutely need to embrace again. While the kids excitement of moving to a new country and starting a new life has been the shot in the arm I needed, there are things I need to tend to again. Time to get back to work.
I’ve now been in Copenhagen for a week and have had a tiny bit of time to get a feel for the city. The closest city I can compare this to is London. However I keep reminding myself that this is not the UK, things are decidedly different here. The best example I can think of was when I was walking, I take a turn off the main high street, onto what looked like a simple residential area, and there at the end of the road I could see the wind turbines1. It was just another reminder, things are different here. However, the biggest difference that I can gather is the city’s approach to transport.
The truth is though the city’s layout is different, the streets are wider. They have very distinct lanes for the different modes of transport. The lack of total dependence on the car is absolutely evident here. Every form of transport has been catered to in one form or another. Walking, cycling, scooters, boats, metro, train, buses and even the ‘humble’ car. The first few days I spent walking. That’s because this simple act of taking a long walk and watching what’s going on in the world has been an exercise that I have not been able to do over these last decade(?!). The Gulf is many things, but a haven and promoter for walkers it is not.
Most telling for me is that I’m about to have walked more in the month of October, than any other month over the last year (according to my iPhone, which is missing a great deal of steps I know, but I’m using it as a loose indicator).
I’m now also looking very closely at buying a Segway Ninebot Kickscooter as a fun and simple way to get around town. While there are scooters everywhere for hire, the cost adds up really quickly (by my calculation use the scooter for 140 trips and you’ve paid off the scooter). That’s the other thing about micromobility, it’s generally really affordable, even if you have to replace the scooter relatively regularly - it’s a utility cost more than anything.
The other element that is clear here is the fact that this is not a Global city. There are no Amazon Prime trucks running around. There isn’t a MacDonalds or Starbucks on every corner (although these two staples do exist here). There is no Apple store. Vodaphone doesn’t operate here (at least I haven’t seen the Vodaphone logo anywhere). And so it goes. In this regard, it feels like a place caught in time…with it’s own home brands, made by and catering it’s own people. Some companies I’ve never heard of before, others have actually made the leap outside these borders.
Over the last 8 years, the word ‘local’ was seen as a bit of a derogative term. Somehow, local here is celebrated, as it’s the main part of your every day life. It’s another part that I will need to recalibrate my thinking.
Since arriving in Copenhagen, I’ve eaten at one restaurant and it was a magnificent. The one thing that I do have to say is that the produce here is exceptional. I knew that strawberries here have a good reputation, but I didn’t expect that. Bringing the shopping into my apartment, I could smell them straight away. I haven’t smelt a strawberry in so long.
Buying local chicken, local tomatoes, berries, have all really elevated my meals considerably. I’ve been getting more and more into Jamie Oliver’s Food Tube channel as well and have been really loving it.
I knew that this would be a thing. I’ve not gotten into a habit yet for listening and doing my Danish lessons but I do intend to do incorporate into my life very very soon.
I know I’ve spoken about this before, but they always take my breathe away. I love them so much because they signal progress. They signal the future married to the past that I was walking through. ↩︎
I loved these security deterrent balls in front of the parliament building (at least I think it is the parliament building). The best was the full grown man practicing his parkour across them 😂.
So I finally tried a bicycle today (courtesy of Donkey Republic). I don’t want to recall how long it’s been since I’ve ridden a bike, but it was fun…except after 50min I was pretty hot. On the other side of things, offering far less value for money was the Lime scooter. While it was quick and easy, I didn’t love the ride (it was a little too bumpy) but I can certainly see the appeal in the city - will definitely be trying it again. Also, I’m convincing myself why I wouldn’t order a Swapfiets (which unlike the Donkey bike, seriously looks amazing with the blue tire).
My favourite thing about the architecture in Copenhagen is that they are not afraid to use colour. Even the flowers.
I’ve now been in Copenhagen for a few days and had a tiny bit of time to get a feel for the city. I keep reminding myself that this is not the UK, things are decidedly different here. The best example I can think of was when I was walking yesterday, I take a turn off the main high street, onto what looked like a simple residential area, and there at the end of the road I could see the wind turbines.
I know I’ve spoken about this before, but they always take my breathe away. I love them so much because they signal progress. They signal the future married to the past that I was walking through.
First pic of Copenhagen during the day. I’ve seen this bridge multiple times in our YouTube exploration of the city, now home is right behind it (at least for a month).
The first thing I saw flying into Denmark that put a real smile on my face was the wind turbines along the coast. Absolutely majestic and a real signal that things are different here. So awesome as they wave hello while generating energy.
Moving from the deserts of Dubai to the coldness of Northern Europe means most of my clothes don’t work. One of the things I’m excited about is building out my wardrobe with stuff I’ve not been able to wear for a decade. My guide on this journey is The Modest Man.
Off to Copenhagen today. Sadly I’m not going with my entire family as the wife’s visa has not been issued yet. Hopefully it will come in the next few weeks - moving a family across man made borders is never easy.
I’m really enjoying @timswast Inktober pixel art. This is just a fun month for art.
Issue 013 of my newsletter In Abeyance is now live. This one was a lot of fun to research and write about, although I barely scratched the surface. Also it’s linked to my theme for Inktober.
Inktober continues to roll on for me. The big difference for me is the use of the iPad. Makes it therapy.
So I’m taking inspiration from @jakeparker for this series (in that he creates one large image). The theme is micromobility.
Ok, I lied. I couldn’t help myself. Here’s my first sketch for Inktober 2019, inspired by our future home and the Christiania Bike.
It’s been a while since I visited CNN Lite. It’s minimal nature is perfect for getting the main stories of the day. I wish there were more sites like it on the internet.
iPadOS is terrible for mouse and keyboard support. Sometimes the mouse wheel works, sometimes it doesn’t. Cmd+Tab works, sometimes it doesn’t. The virtual keyboard should go away when typing, sometimes it doesn’t. Terrible. It’s a mouse and keyboard!
Procreate 5 has a few features that I’m actually really looking forward to. Specifically the animation tools and the Apple Pencil updates.
I won’t be contributing to Inktober this year either (on account that I have my own projects to focus my mind on) but wish everyone good luck with the exercise, it’s always a fun time to see what everyone comes up with.
Daaaammmmnnnn. Mini Motorways is sucking way to much time from me. But I can’t help it. It’s wonderful.
It’s a weird thing but I’ve been to several bookstores this trip and I literally have no interest in buying any of the books or magazines. It’s not that I’m not reading, I’m just not interested in collecting any more dead trees. I think I’ve reach peak short term hit consumerism.
This is the second edition of the Micro.blog feature request post. Last year, I reviewed what I hoped Micro.blog would add to the service. @Manton and co have had a very, very busy this year, so this isn’t to diminish all the work they’ve done. Rather these are a list of features that I would like to see included into the platform at some point.
All these features unfortunately haven’t made it into the service. Although we’ve drafts have been added, I do have one additional feature I wanted added:
Totally nailed this feature request.
Photos should be showcased on a grid of three squares across. Ideally this should be another standard page found at mydomain/photos.
I’ve asked for this before, I’ll ask for it again. I want to know how many posts I’ve written. How many photos. A histogram of my posting to get a feel for when and how often I post. How many replies have I made?
I would love to see a yearly view of the number of posts I’ve made on a month by month basis. Each month could have two bars showing how much stuff gets posted to my site and how much stuff is interaction with others.
A year ago we were limited to tweaking CSS. Now we have a LOT more power behind us. So the initial request was completed…however I’ll be that guy. While I’ve sorted my design for the foreseeable future, apart from the occasional colour tweak, I don’t intend to change my design while I’m on Micro.blog. Partly because I’ve spent a ton of time on it as it is. Partly because the manner in which I make these changes is pretty cumbersome. It should be easier than it is, especially for someone not technical.
Bonus related feature: I don’t think that theming in general is easy on the web. A proper feature changer is to be able to design your site in a block type editor.
I initially used to love the fact that I was limited in what I could do which was to play around with the CSS and that was it. Since then the addition of updating the footer has been added. A great additions for sure, but I want full control of my site. I’m paying for hosting, eventually I’d like to be allowed to control the whole look of my site.
Yup. Sorted.
This is finally being offered, but not officially (blink that reply and it’s gone)? I’d like to see a yearly subscription to the service become official.
Not yet, but something tells me that this is on the docket very soon.
Micro.blog by it’s nature has two streams. The first is your website stream, and only includes your posts, while the second stream is the social one that includes everyone you follow and your posts starting with an @ symbol. As a user both are important, yet they are given wildly different treatment.
There has been some movement on this, with the addition of new icons. However it’s not as granular as I would want it.
There are currently 9 categories that you can contribute towards. It’s a good start, but hardly what I’d call comprehensive. I’d like to see a great deal more categories. Architecture, Engineering, Comics, Stationary, Country-specific-categories, and the list goes on.
I use Blot for my other website, Stet.Build. What I’ve noticed is that updating anything using that system is instant. That includes posts, css design, etc. I’d like some of that updating speed on Micro.blog if that’s possible (maybe I’m asking too much).
I recently had to update a few things on my CSS (it was for this post actually) and it actually seemed to me that Manton has sorted the original slow gremlins that impacted the design control, so scratch this item of the list as well.
You know what I miss? Long magazine articles spanning multiple pages, with a number of asides about a specific topic. Wired used to do those, but the granddaddy was (is?) The Comics Journal.
Awesome hashtag over on Twitter for Climate Action. If this much positive action doesn’t put a smile on your face, nothing will.
This is interesting. I’m now being forced into living the iPad lifestyle as my main computing device (until I can revive my Mac or worse replace it).
Let’s see if Federico is onto something with his commitment and enjoyment of the iPad as his favourite device. I haven’t really had to do this on account of having a Mac. I found what I believed the iPad was ideal for - everything involving the Apple Pencil.
It’s going to be interesting to write, research, edit and draw several issues of my newsletter on this device. Unfortunately I’ve still not switched to iPadOS, so the experience does feel somewhat hindered and limited at the moment.
Funnily enough, the only app that doesn’t have an iOS equivalent has a web version available, everything else I use has a fully functional iOS app.
One of the things that I do when I’m on holiday is to buy a couple of magazines that I devour over the course of the holiday. This mini break starts off with The Monocle. Along with The Economist, the only magazines I buy semi regularly.
Last breakfast in Dubai. I have a nice and long post to write about what my thoughts on the place are. Overall I have really enjoyed my time in the Gulf. I wouldn’t have lasted 8 years if it wasn’t a pleasant and safe environment to live, work and play.
So it’s clear that my MacBook is officially dead. Took it to the Apple store, tried a new adapter, and the computer wouldn’t turn on. Tried a few keyboard combinations but unfortunately nothing seemed to work. I’ll be taking in to be repaired, it’s easily the best Mac I’ve ever had and honestly I’m not really looking to be buying a major computer any time soon.
🌚 It was a full moon a few days ago. The significance being that over the summer, my favourite thing with Ryan was to first hunt for the moon from the various windows in the house. Then we would sit in the dark and gaze at it together. It’s really captured his imagination at a really young age (that and cleaning up). The apple clearly doesn’t fall far from the tree.
💻 Oh no. I think my laptop has given up the ghost. Orange light in maglite adaptor is on but the power isn’t coming on. Looks like I will be relying exclusively on my iPad Pro until I try and get my laptop fixed.
Finally get to start thinking a little bit about our new life in Copenhagen. Both excited and terrified. Making the leap to a place I’ve never even visited is either brave or stupid. Probably a little bit of both.
Living from a suitcase for the last week has been interesting. Especially the food side of things. I’ve now tried a few breakfast places and consistently the eggs never come as I ordered them. I’m likely more critical than most about this but still.
🎥 Just came out of Once Upon a time in Hollywood. Seriously, someone tell me what the hell I just missed? I know I’ve not seen many movies recently, but I feel like I didn’t get the joke…
You’ve stacked all the things that need to be done. People to pay, things to sell and collect. You’re in the car. You’re 5 minutes from your destination and you have a flat tire. It’s 2pm in the afternoon, you’re in the desert and it 45°C outside. Get out to fix the tire. You’ve got so much on your mind in your panic you forget to put the hand brake on. You get to work and the car rolls a little forward. Fuck.
Out of nowhere a good samaritan pulls over and just helps you to get this together as quickly as possible. There are good people in this world.
Last few days in Dubai. Have another mammoth day today for doing a bunch of stuff, fingers crossed it won’t be an exercise in frustration…although I’m bracing myself for the worst (trying to be stoic about it).
You had me at iPhone 11 Pro. I was honestly planning on getting a new camera, but the funds there will now go into this beast of a phone. It’s going to have to last me a good 5 years to make it worthwhile but I am pretty confident that won’t be a problem. Also Pro font!
Moving out day. The house I’ve managed to live in for nearly 2 years! Considering my stupid record of moving houses and countries as regularly as I do, Damn it’s been a looonnnnngggg day so far.
I managed to get issue 011 of my bi-monthly newsletter In Abeyance out. Wasn’t sure if I was going to make it this month (on account of the move).
Yasmine took this photo and it absolutely hit a real nerve with me. The way he’s holding the two crayons in complete defiance and triumph. I wish he keeps that spirit throughout his life.
And like that…it’s gone. It’s been our faithful companion for our 4 years in the Gulf. It all becomes that much more real when you finally loose your wheels. Frankly speaking I am in many ways looking forward to living my life without all the anscillary costs that goes into the ownership of a car. Maybe living life in a more sustainable and dare I say, healthy manner? The irony of course is I’ll have to rent a car till I leave Dubai - it’s impossible (or exceptionally expensive) to function here without one.
Family away for the next couple of weeks while I sort out the house and get into my best Lenny Kravitz mode and fly away.
I sold my desk today. When I first moved to Dubai I decided to treat myself. I got myself a big ass desk that I could spread my stuff across and generally embrace the clutter. Now that we’re on our way to Denmark I’m going to have to downsize.
Having said that I have learnt to embrace the digital a little bit more. Sure I still have room in my life for some paper (namely my journal and pocket notebooks), but I think overall it’s going to be about getting by with less stuff.
Goodbye old friend.
That’s 2 for 2 from Logitech. Combined with my K380 keyboard, the MX Anywhere 2S mouse is arguably the most expensive mouse I’ve bought since the Magic Mouse (the one with the nipple). This thing though is awesome.
Just finished listening to episode 361 of 99% Invisible. I found myself enjoying it even more as the second part of the episode talks about two topics I’ve just covered in my newsletter, Tall Timber and Two Carbon Targets.
The interview with Vince Beiser was excellent. Sadly they beat me to the topic on sand - to be fair Vince was way, way ahead of me on that one. He does an amazing job of explaining the premise of his book, called The World in a Grain, which I can’t wait to read.
The more I read about plastic the more upset I get. Thankfully there are organisations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, specifically the New Plastic Economy Global Commitment, that are doing really good work. We all have a role to play in tackling this issue.
Yup, I’ll be getting a copy of this book I think before I head of to Denmark. We’ve been meaning to get into more vegetables as the centre of our meals, just need that extra push.
As someone moving to Copenhagen soon, I read these stories, and consider whether or not my future is going to have a cargo bike in it. Maybe if we can get through the winter months.
It’s all getting serious now. Selling a whole bunch of stuff that we’ve loved and used as we transition back to Europe. Today has totally destroyed me. We are certainly getting there, but the next couple of weeks are going to be mega.
Because it’s always good to give stuff on your birthday, here’s issue 010 of my newsletter In Abeyance. This one is about modularity, the circular and plastics economy and Finch.
40 today.
I spent the first 20 years riding my bike. Listening to grunge. Learning how to draw. Reading comics.
The next 10 years I spent learning about graphic design, the web and talking about make comics.
The last 10 years were spent actually making some comics and learning to be both a husband and father. At some point I gave up on putting my energy into comics.
Instead I’ve embraced putting all my energies into an endeavour that brings together all of the things that I love under one roof. The work on Stet.Build has only really just begun. For the first time in a long while I’m really excited to see what the next 10 years brings.
One of the happier occurrences that has happened, in spite of all the disruption a move brings, is being a happy member of the circular economy. Being able to find people that can use and love the vast majority of our stuff so that it doesn’t end up in a landfill (at least just yet) actually brings a smile to my face. We discard so much in this world, every little helps.
Honestly, if you ever needed a reason to switch to Feedbin, then the recent set of updates to the service should be reason enough. Really excited about both the new iOS app and Read Later service. Feedbin is a service that gets better and better year on year and run by one guy - I’m going to be getting into this theme a lot more in the coming year.
It’s official, we’re moving to Copenhagen in October.
Living in the Gulf has provided us with a safe and comfortable environment to start our lives as a young family. Given us some stability during these early years. However, there comes a time when you have to move onto the next adventure.
It’s been over a decade since I lived in Europe. We can now look forward to all the things. Cold weather. Winter clothes. Snow. Clean air. Hot chocolate. Long walks. Cycling. Discovering little cafes. Visiting galleries. The original Legoland. Lakes. Parks. Contemporary architecture. Danish design. New Nordic cuisine. Hygge. Tivoli Gardens. Farms.
It took a while but Zane finally has really gotten into drawing. For years it was an exercise of scribbles and little else. Finally can now start introducing him to stationary.
All the feels in this video around the bystander effect. The one that completely caught my breath was the final clip.
While on the topic of Ecosia, their shop also adds to the tree planting directive. Buy a t-shirt, plant 20 trees. I’m going for the Circuit Tree and Give Back to The Earth tees.
I only found out about Ecosia a couple of days ago. I’ve more or less successfully made the jump from Google to DDG a year ago and now I seem intent on jumping again. Truth be told, it’s good to have these alternatives online. We all deserve a better web.
While I have all but officially given up on buying Hobonichi Techo’s, I’m always excited at this time of the year for their build up to next year’s lineup. They are introducing a new Techo however, the day-free, which might tempt me back?
And if you’re asking yourself, “Aren’t you just causing problems for yourself down the line with physical notebooks?”. My answer to that is simple, when it comes to my daily logs/journals, those I keep, till the end.
I’ve amassed over 60 Field Notes sized books, 15 Muji/Midori A5 notebooks and several A6 Hobonichi books.
I’m having a real hard time letting go of my completed physical notebooks. They capture different parts of my life. Thoughts and ideas. Shopping lists. Sketches. Projects. Things I was struggling with. Things I was contemplating. Things I wanted to get done. Things that never got done.
I’ve scanned several of these (maybe half), but really don’t have the heart to part ways with them. I know that I likely will never look at them again, except maybe as an exercise in nostalgia. Knowing that, do I keep them in a digital form only? Or will I get upset 10 years from now that I didn’t keep this physical record of the stuff that I made?
Plain emails. As someone who has struggled with email newsletter design for the first half of this year, there definitely is a simplicity to this approach. Of course, Buttondown is the best way of doing plain text emails.
Spent some time sprucing up the success message when you subscribe to my newsletter.
Yesterday I learnt a great new word, turgid (excessively ornate or complex in style or language). It was the perfect desciption of the carbon footprint subject I just posted about and came from one of my readers. Mike is now going to be my editor on the larger project and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been looking for an editor for over a year now, can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.
11 years. That really gave me pause. Seth’s been writing to his site, every single day for 11 years. That is a truly remarkable streak. I only discovered his work last year. There are soo many lessons to be learnt here, the biggest one being learning patience and getting through the dip.
I hope everyone is having a great summer so far. If you live in the northern hemisphere, chances are you’re experiencing some form of heatwave. Issue 009 of my bi-monthly newsletter, In Abeyance, is fitting of a world getting noticeably hotter every year.
This month’s topic for my newsletter is really, really kicking my ass. I guess it swings both ways. Sometimes the topic writes itself and sometimes you’re wrestling it to the ground.
Just to follow up on my previous post on my carbon footprint. I just had my car registered and the RTA process gives you the details of your carbon over the last year. At 23%, that’s around 11 tons of carbon. The real number however was 3.4 tons, which implies to me that this calculator is off.
This calculator offers a far more granular experience. Allows you to understand how that big number actually adds up. The curious thing however is how different the country averages are between the calculators. The UN calculator seems to imply it’s 93.21 tons/year, while this calculator thinks that the UAE average is 23.3 tons/year. Someone is telling porkies.
Pangolin. I didn’t know what this was and neither did anyone else. Zane knew and he wanted one. All. Week. Long.
I’d never considered my carbon footprint. The real culprit seems to be the food that we eat. While going vegan, buying local and environmentally friendly produce would reduce the carbon footprint, it’s still not as much of a saving as anticipated. Calculate your footprint here.
I think I may have found my new favourite website on the internet. It’s called Our World in Data. Honestly, I am likely going to get lost on this site for days. Send food. And coffee.
The United Nations Carbon Offset platform is something new to me. Choose a project, pay some money and offset some of your carbon. Nearly $1 million raised so far.
Seriously useful set of tips and tricks of becoming a better writer. There is something for everyone looking to write things longer than a sentence or two. My favourite is bird by bird, switching the font and creating thoughtful headlines.
Wait, what? Nick Clegg is Facebook’s head of global affairs? What is this bizarro world we’re living in. Next you’ll tell me that Donald Trump is in the White House and Boris Johnson in No.10 …wait…
Funny place to be in at the moment. So we cancelled our holidays last week. Park of it is work related, part of it isn’t. Our summer will need a good shot in the arm to recover.
One of my favourite reads in the morning has been my very own site. Using the ’On this day’ plugin (which I’ve renamed to ‘Previously’), I get a hit of nostalgia and remember where I was, last year or 5 years ago. One of the many reasons to keep writing daily. For my future self.
Panic have my attention…even though I’m good for text editors.
I’m super impressed by Rory Stewart and his take on politics. It’s a shame that he appears to be leaving political life but something tells me we’ll certainly hear from him.
It is somewhat late this week, but issue 008 of my bi-monthly newsletter, In Abeyance is out.
It’s Comicon weekend. There used to be a time when this weekend was the most exciting time for me. It was similar to WWDC for Apple software developers. Sadly in many ways that part of my life is over. Maybe it’s on account of age, but I’ve stopped reading as many comics these days. My reading focus has shifted to philosophy, marketing, engineering and architecture. It’s funny how one goes through different phases in their life.
It’s Prime day and I’m actually in a little bit of a dilemma. My 6 year old Kindle Paperwhite is still going strong. The only compelling reason to upgrade is the higher resolution screen and being waterproof. Is it worth it?
Yesterday my youngest and I turned off the lights and looked up into the sky at the moon. Ryan is completely fascinated by this changing object in the sky. I’m even considering buying a telescope just for him to experience it in a whole new way. Not sure how ambitious it is for a 1½ year old to grasp what he’d be looking at.
With only 1 week to go before it’s been 50 years since Apollo 11 landed on the moon, I’ve been slowly immersing myself in all things moon related. Really looking forward to the Todd Douglas documentary, here’s the trailer. The 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast has been an incredible audio journey. Meanwhile the amazing Lego sets that have been released for the Saturn V and Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) are top of my wishlist at the moment.
Finally, here’s a really old (and pretty rough) cartoon I drew 6 years ago now, when Neil Armstrong died.
Try as I might, the Hobonichi planner has never clicked with me - it’s a combination of the small size and the defined dates. What has worked for me is the Nanami Seven Seas B7 notebook. So much so I bought 3 of them and that’s my (almost) daily journaling sorted for the next 6 years.
One thing I will say about Singapore is that they definitely make things BIG. And I’m used to Dubai big. The humidity was super uncomfortable. The food was incredible (had one of my best meals in a really long time) and overall the place is crazy 😜 expensive.
In a weird sort of way, Singapore is the closest I can experience Japan, but without living there. Just came from a Japanese stationary store that made me smile from ear to ear. Topping it off with some Japanese grub (second of the day).
On Orchard street. Couldn’t help myself. Found a nice little Chinese place for some food and beers while listening to the twittering of the birds that are densely packed into the trees. I’m sure the locals ignore it but it’s completely captured me.
Travelling on your own has seriously become a pretty smooth experience - especially when you are not checking anything in. E-gates. Electronic boarding pass. Solid WiFi. Good work DXB.
Not sure how I’ve not stumbled on Alex Denk’s website before now. I own Dark Mode for Safari, but what astounds me is the sheer volume of applications that the man is shipping. Astounding.
I really don’t get Reddit. In fact, the truth of the matter is I’ve never gotten along with online forums in general, not since the late 90s early 00s.
My brother mentioned to me that Malcom Gladwell has a Masterclass on writing. That’s $100 gone from my wallet.
Issue 007 of my bi-monthly newsletter about the built environment, In Abeyance, is out. This issue is concentrate on Tall Timber. This one practically wrote itself and I could have easily written several more 1000 words. Maybe for a future issue.
I’ve had a car loan for the last 10 years, across three countries. I’ve always had to pay the loans early on account of leaving the country. Today I made my last payment on the car. I wasn’t loosing any sleep over the payments but it’s definitely good to have that sorted.
6 years ago I wrote a post, There was a time. At the time the web was looking like it lost something important, because frankly it had. With the ascension of (anti-)social media in the shape of Facebook (and others), I felt that the magic from 2004 was lost forever. I’m glad to report that 6 years later we’re slowly clawing back that control.
Taking back what we lost to something being easy or free, because easy meant limited control, while free was a lie. If you’re not the customer, you’re the product. If you want to share your ideas online, you absolutely should. Keep them under your own name and if you feel like you want to interact with others, then federate or connect to Micro.blog.
Widow’s Weeds from Silversun Pickups is easily the album of the summer for me. Just great from the start to the end.
Sometimes the digital is vastly inferior to the analogue. It’s not always the case, but I can certainly think of several examples. One of these examples is my habit calendar project. I had one of those lightning bolt moments yesterday which will change this project’s direction for next year. In the meantime, if you want to best use this, I honestly suggest taking a print out of it.
Bit of Mari Kondo this afternoon. Started off with my room. The hardest items are the ones that I have made my mark on (notebooks mainly), letting go of projects is hard. Next up my tsundoku.
John’s usually pretty astute, however this line really stuck out at me:
Fifth: Fuck this “sir” shit. We don’t have titles in the United States.
He seems to forget that the US is not the centre of the world. Furthermore, respecting different cultural norms isn’t a bad thing - unless of course following your President is the cultural norm regardless of what he does. I’m currently working on a Japanese project and I use honorifics in all of my correspondence. It’s a small sign of respect and cultural inclusion.
Time can slip through your fingers at incredible speed. This time one year ago we were all on a plane going on holiday. School hasn’t even finished for Zane yet! This has been an incredibly long school year.
Well played Mr.Gladwell. Well played. The first two episodes of Season 4 of Revisionist History are out and they are great. I am a total tortoise. This is vintage Gladwell.
Happy to report that Justified is in fact excellent. That being said the first few episodes were not great (felt like bad episodic television). Acting and characters were awesome. The stories were not. However once you got past the 4th episode it all started coming together.
I spent ages trying to sort out a dark version of my website. I finally sorted it out using this switcher, but this would have been decidedly easier to implement.
WTF is up with these pen pals? Rather than tackling the issues, they’re busy sending letters to each other and telling us that they got them. Well I’m glad the NKPS and USPS are working just fine guys, carry on.
Fascinating survey conducted across the Arab world. In a region where this type of survey isn’t typically conducted, this offers a generally +ve view of progress, in a place where progress is extinguished like fire under a boot.

I consider my life online across three distinct stints. The first ran been 2004 to around 2010. In that time I wrote around 1800 posts, many long form articles. The second stint was across 2010 and 2017, which I refer to as the nomad years. I meandered from platform to platform, changing the reason for writing with every move. The third stint began last year and with it brought much needed focus.
I’ve managed to publish 680 new posts (the rest where stuff I imported from Instagram and a handful of posts from Medium). During this time, I was rediscovering my writing muscle. Rediscovering how to write online again. And most importantly, rediscovering why I should post online. I’ve been writing more consistently online than ever before - usually it seems that I don’t go more than a few days before getting the itch. Going forward I really hope that I start writing more about the process of writing and drawing for my online publications over at Stet.Build.
I’ve been writing online in some form or another since 2001. Around 2004, blogging really took off and there was a period in time where the system was more important than what was written. Over the years I’ve meandered from one system to another. What I’ve now realised is that the system has a major influence on the type of things that I end up posting. Micro.blog is a truly excellent system for posts that run around the 200-400 word range. It’s great for posting single images. It’s likely pretty good for podcasts and a single video as well (I don’t have any experience for these types of posts yet). Where it fails is anything beyond the confines of those walls 1. The reason? Friction.
If you wanted to write something a little longer, the system lets you. It even allows you to add a title if you want (you may not want, Micro.blog doesn’t judge). You want to add an image to that post? Go ahead but you have no say in where that image gets added (until after you publish). Friction. You want to add multiple images? Sure, but go to the upload section and then copy paste the link and add your image tags around it all. Friction. You want to edit something? Sure, but it takes a while to load Posts > Edit. Friction.
I’m not saying this is wrong, I’m just saying it’s a thing to bear in mind. What all these little friction points do is allow the software to set a tone. You want to do anything more taxing? You’re going to need to work a little bit harder. Which more than likely means that you won’t. The system plays a part, consciously or subconsciously.
I’ve really gotten into a groove for what I use my iPad for. Mainly for drawing (on Procreate) and marking up drawings (on PDFExpert). Apart from that it’s the occasional browsing and writing (although they are a second class citizen to the Mac). However, this new feature has my attention as something that could help me move beyond just the above.
Issue 006 of my bi-monthly newsletter, In Abeyance, about the built environment is out. With this issue I’m trying a slightly new format that will come out every third Thursday.
Nearly 10 years ago I left the UK. A lot can happen in a decade. Keeping in touch with friends has been a challenge. These last couple of days have taught me to just call or write and reconnect. It’s left me with a warm feeling that intend to keep feeding.
Just watched the first episode of Justified. I’d give it a solid 6/10. I’ll give it a few more episodes because I’m an Elmore Leonard fan.
5 months and 2 weeks into the year and I’ve just completed 16,000, written and edited, words. I’ve published 8,500 of those words as part of In Abeyance.
This could only have been possible using the show up every day and do maximum 30 minutes at a time method. My aim was to carry out at least one session every morning as a bare minimum. If there was more juice in the tank, I’d do some more. I may not have hit my mental goal but the system is clear. I’ll get there eventually, one day at a time.
One for @macgenie :)
Finally after 8 years in the Middle East, I’m finally living in a country that has Amazon Prime. Now I get to see what all the fuss is about. Prime Video is a welcome addition in the house.
Looking to make a meaningful change to your website? Go and check out Beautiful Web Type. If I was in the market for new typefaces, I’d be checking out Vollkorn. And probably pair it with Cooper Hewitt.
Awesome work by Alpay Efe. His exceptional Bodies series really stood out for met.
If you’ve got kids, and you’re done with the Donaldson library of books, then might I suggest both Jon Klassen and Rob Biddulph. Zane has been seriously enjoying the books from both of these gents. Seriously recommend anything by them. Also while you’re at Rob’s site, he has some pretty sweet prints for sale.
I dare you to watch the second video for the Black Fly and not smile.
Happy that we’ll be hearing more from this awesome couple. Sad that it’s via Spotify…
Issue 005, of my ‘monthly’ (it’s moving to a bi-monthly schedule) newsletter In Abeyance is out. This issue considers the role of urban agriculture within the built environment.
Sneak peak from tomorrow’s issue of In Abeyance. Subscribe now over at www.stet.li/ia
I’m not going to lie, I’m a little underwhelmed by the WWDC announcements. Maybe it’s because everyone was building up the upcoming changes as earth shattering, which they’re not? I definitely wanted more wackiness from iPadOS and Project Catalyst. Maybe when I play with these updates I’ll change my mind and see the genius that a 2 hour presentation could not convey, certainly hope so.
The boys had a proper nature lesson this morning at the park. Tons of birds in the trees, a few started hovering right in front of us. Yasmine quickly realised what the reason was. A big, fat juicy worm in the grass that the birds had spotted. The boys ‘protected’ the worm, as they took a closer look of it and then moved away to let nature do her thing.
Seth Godin’s instagram is completely on point. He’s basically used instagram in two creative ways that I’ve not seen before (although I have seen the use of a single image being split across tiles before it’s not been videos).
2018 National Geographic Photo Contest, wallpapers. There goes several hours of my life. Who needs a new update to operating systems from Apple when the internet gives you this?
Jamie Oliver’s empire collapses as 22 UK restaurants close. Sad news. Over the years I’ve really come to respect what Jamie has accomplished. On a personal note my family and I owe him a debt of gratitude for teaching me how to cook eggs, which we all have on weekends.
Coding your own newsletter is a total mugs game. I know since I’ve been playing it for a few months now. Total waste of time. Go to Topol and sort it out. Free for limited number of projects, reasonable pricing if you want to go pro. Totally worth the price.
While on the subject of good newsletters, James Clears latest, Martha Graham on the Hidden Danger of Comparing Yourself to Others, really hit home for me. It’s human nature to compare yourself, but ultimately you are racing one person, yourself.
Season two of Paul Jarvis’s Company of One podcast (which is a companion to his book). Man, I’ve got a ton of good books to read this summer.
After a solid year of wearing a fitness tracker, I’ve finally decided to give up on the practice. The point of data is to inform and then influence your behaviour. This didn’t happen. It’s not a coincidence that I now have a system that keeps me doing exercise every day.
I’ve been on a 90s music trip. Listening to Buz Luhrmann’s Everyone’s Free to Wear Sunscreen takes me back to University days with Rich. If you’ve never heard it, I highly recommend giving it a listen.
Finished off this piece that I started earlier this year. Even found a permenant home on my about page.
One of the things I’ve realised this last year is that since around 2007 the web evolved into something in a major hurry. Hurry to grow. Hurry to be heard. Hurry to make money. Hurry to connect. The cost of that speed is playing out now. The alternative takes time but is infinitely more satisfying.
A discussion between Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell. These two have such great chemistry together. That bit about NPR producers had me in stitches.
While looking for some icons to use on my site, I stumbled across Feather. Fantastic project if you’re not aware and a great way to add (and edit) icons as part of your site.
After watching the ending of Game of Thrones, go read The New Yorker interview with Emilia Clarke.
If you’ve not had the chance to listen to 13 Minutes to the Moon from the BBC World Service, I cannot recommend this highly enough. Exceptional podcast. Great production values and a delight every Monday for the rest of the summer.
The more I use my site the more I see it as a digital notebook with a very specific task. It’s meant to capture my digital mood at the time. What captured my imagination and what I felt was important enough to share with others. The trick I guess is to keeping it to just that - I’ve fallen into the trap of sharing personal thoughts that were better kept in a journal (digital or otherwise).
So I just read This is Marketing by Seth Godin. I stumbled onto Seth’s work just last year, this is the second book of his I’ve read. Both excellent. I’m a believer. Looking to help some good people I’m going to start ‘sneezing’ some services/products I find essential.
I’ve had my Kindle Paperwhite for 6 years now. A couple of days ago I noticed a new interaction for highlighting, which now underlines text. The top menu was also updated. I’ve considered buying a new version but when the existing is great and getting better, what’s the point?
Things I’m reading:
The world needs this receipt design.
The Pithos looks incredible. You also get a nice print to go with that pre-order.
🍿 Just finished the 2nd season of Cobra Kai. Takes everything I loved about the movie and makes it infinitely better. Love the characters, the humour and the overall story. There are a few weak scenes but overall I give it a massive👍.
Another awesome parenting moment. Today was Zane’s first ride on the bike, no stabilisers. That boy has always had a real talent for anything with wheels. His brain just gets it. Obviously a winter using a balance bike prepared him. Super recommend the Y-bike from an early age.
Ramadan hours means I can spend a little more time with the kids. I honestly never take this for granted. Even if I’m not directly involved, watching them play is a joy.
I know I just put the latest issue of In Abeyance (read it here) to bed a few days ago, but the idea for the next one is burning a hole in my head. I find it best not to struggle with these things and let the ideas flow when they wish.
New (and last) Cranberries album is something to savour. That voice takes be back to when I was 16 listening to ‘Zombie’ for the first time. It was on my first bootleg CD, complete with typo (‘Stells Like Teen Spirit’).
Seems this book Under the Influence is a good read while we wait for @manton to finish off his book about social media. Via Recommendo
It’s been a pretty stressful weekend that’s ended in a positive way. Being a father is definitely rewarding but can also be heartbreaking.
Last quote by Milton Glaser (at least for this week):
Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. it doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energized or less energized. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. if you are more tired then you have been poisoned. if you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and i suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.
— Milton Glaser
The Arup annual report is out. Last year’s edition was such a revelation to me when I saw it. This line sums it up for me:
Arup is owned by its members. That means, unlike most, their annual report isn’t about reassuring shareholders.
Issue 004 of my monthly newsletter In Abeyance. This is the second part of my series on Hyperloop, focusing on pod technology and the industry. You can also read part 1.
We had a little visitor who fell out of his nest earlier today. Kids loved it. Thankfully she was able to fly back up on her own.
I’ve been writing a journal every day for the last few months. It’s a small exercise that clears my thoughts at the start of the day. The 10 year plan from Debbie Millman is a different exercise, more of the macro to the daily journal micro.
Cover artwork for issue 004 of my monthly newsletter In Abeyance. This issue was a lot of fun to put together. It also comes with a bunch of changes to the format of the email itself and changes to the website from earlier this month.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that Wednesdays definitely feels like podcast release day. Saturday/Sunday/Monday are a drought. On Tuesday the trickle starts. Then Wednesday is the wave.
This quote from Frank Chimero really resonated with me:
Art is anything that’s better than it needs to be.
— Frank Chimero
It feels in someway linked to another one of my favourite quote about what design is:
Design is the process of going from an existing condition to a preferred one. Observe that there is no relationship to art.
— Milton Glaser
Frank’s new website is definitely art. Love the typeface he’s gone for, Lector.
With only 281 posts, Arley Leal Mendoza’s Instagram is a must follow for anyone interested in architecture and sketching.
I will try and put a concise guide for those wanting to spruce up their email newsletters. All I can say it’s generally really painful. However Testi.at is a great little service with a reasonable price to see your design across platforms & clients.
A year ago today, while fighting my own demons from a professional disappointment earlier in the year, my mind was searching for a project to put my energy behind. I’d sleepwalked through evening and was feeling a little deflated. After grabbing a shower, I put my head on my pillow and like a bolt of lightning the idea was in my head. Formed. Galvanised.
I looked excitedly at my wife. Fast asleep. I quickly rushed back to my room and started scribbling the very first ideas in fear that when I wake up the next morning it would be gone. There was literally no chance of that happening. The force was strong with this one.
Over the next month I would be using a wall to throw as many ideas as possible on there. The crux of it all would be a vehicle to allow me to do all the things that I loved to do and that I’d spent the better part of my adult life doing. That is engineering, graphic design and illustration.
I began sharing the starts of this journey at the start of 2019 over at Stet.Build. The first output being my monthly newsletter In Abeyance. It’s been an amazingly productive year to go from that initial idea to something a little more tangible.
Cobra Kai is back! Easily one of my favourite fun shows of last year. If you were a product of the 80s and the Karate Kid, this is so well done.
Great resource of ethical alternatives and resources. Covers the range from browsers through to analytics, file sharing and books. Good to see some of my top favourites in there (Micro.blog, DDG, ProtonMail, Fathom).
If you’re looking for elegant analytics for your site, suggest you take a look at Fathom. They’ve got a pretty clear data policy and you can set it up for as little as $5/month using Digital Ocean. In some ways reminds of me Mint.
Every electric car apart from Tesla’s offerings and the occasional BMW prototype has left me cold. The Honda e Prototype car puts a smile on my face, in a Fiat 500 kind of way.
Every once in a while I’m reminded of how cool the internet can be. I’ve been trying to sort out tooltips for the graphs in my newsletter. The system I settled on, Chartist, has this ability but the existing plugin is clearly broken. Thankfully user LukBukkit’s JS-FU is strong. He’s updated the plugin and works as intended. Found him on Twitter so was able to thank him for the work in updating the plugin and making things better for the rest of us. Now we just need Gion to update links to the website.
Soo glad JJ’s back in the saddle for the last Star Wars movie. The teaser trailer has left me completely dizzy with excitement. My only complaint is he didn’t direct the second one. Hopefully Zane will be into SW by then.
Super impressed with how straight forward it is to add good looking charts using Chartist.js I’ve updated the charts for the latest issue of In Abeyance.
I’ve only ever bought a single box of Blackwings, specifically the 344s. Today I rectified that and got some iconic Blackwing 602. I then happened to notice the Midori MD books on my way to pay. If you’ve not tried either, you’re missing out. Big time.
Coding for a newsletter is an exercise in frustration. The number of variables (that are completely out of your control) is mind boggling and rooted in ancient web technology. I’ve not stopped tolling my eyes since around Saturday.
Now that I’ve finally sorted out the Stet.Build website (it was the easiest to resolve), I can turn my attention to aligning the newsletter as well. Think I’m going to go with Foundation for Emails. Looks comprehensive and well documented. Recommended for all Buttondown users.
Ok heard Kings of Leon in the background at the restaurant today and remembered how much I liked these guys. The fact that I’ve not listened to any of their last 3 albums is a travesty.
Finally got a chance to finish a comic. It’s been way too long since I got into something this satisfying. Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy’s The Wake is a great read. Visually however it was a complete tour de force. Murphy’s work truely shone.
Finally got the latest issue of In Abeyance out. Issue 003 is all about Hyperloop. This was a really fun topic to write about, so much so that I’ve had to break it into two parts.
I’m totally onboard the new Joker trailer. My only comment is the color of the suit. I understand it’s incredibly hard to top the cannonical Heath Ledger version of that purple suit, but something feels off about this one. Maybe in the movie it’ll be better?
Here’s the cover to issue 003 of my newsletter In Abeyance (comes out tomorrow). This will be my first 2 parter and centers around Hyperloop. If you’ve not subscribed yet, now’s an excellent time to rectify that easily avoidable error.
Last post about typefaces (at least for today). From one of my favourite type foundaries, TipoType (out of Uruguay no less) have a new slab serif, Aila. It’s on special offer for the same price I paid for their excellent typeface Libertad (which I use on this site). Be sure to check the pdf.
I stand corrected. Source Serif Pro does have old style figures & ligatures. Frank also says he’s got an update coming soon for Google fonts. Great news all around for a great typeface.
On a related note to my previous post, Source Serif Pro now also comes with italics. Only came out 7 months ago but I’d completely missed that announcement. 4 years in the making. Still hasn’t been updated on Google fonts and doesn’t seem to have old style numerals - once you see numbers in this way, you can’t unsee them presented differently.
Update — I stand corrected. Source Serif Pro does have old style figures & ligatures. Frank also says he’s got an update coming soon for Google fonts.
I’ve recently updated my websites, kaa.bz and stet.build with some proper typographic love and attention. Two things spring to mind. The first is that a professional typeface (read the last paragraph of that link) will totally elevate a design. The second is how far browsers have come with their support for all manner of great typographic features.
The Qatar National Museum has finally opened to the public. On a personal level, I’ve devoted 5295 hours to this project (I just checked) and will have more to say about it soon.
I’ve been spending way to much time looking at Matthew Butterick’s fonts. Valkyrie is perfect for running text on a site (works great on a phone size), but Equity and Concourse also look amazing.
What an incredible view of the people’s Vote march to Westminster. Hopefully this will have the impact the previous mega March against the war didn’t.
One of the things that I’ve done regularly (and seen other do themselves) is trying the macro thing before having begun the micro thing. As though it’s a given that you can sit down and bang out a novel, draw a graphic novel or run a marathon. You can’t.
Start micro in everything that you do. When something becomes overwhelming for you, revert to the micro. Make it small and insignificant. Make it easy. The eventual output will absolutely surprise and delight you in ways that doing the same in smaller sittings won’t. The reason is that you do it with very little effort. It was easy. And because it was easy, you can conceive of the future where you continue down this same path.
If you want to write, sing, exercise, draw, read, then do these things, in laughably small chunks, as little as 2 minutes. Every single day. At the same time. Stacked against something you already do.
You go to sleep every day? Great, 5 minutes before that make sure to read one page of a book. Drive to work every day? Great, when you reach work, pull out your journal and write for 5 minutes.
It’s the greatest lesson I learnt from reading Atomic Habits and has really been a revelation for me. You should try it yourself.
Awesome little feature in iAWriter. Commented text (using <!-- --> ) does not contribute to the overall word count. Once you uncomment, the word count increases.
New picture book, Tomorrow I’ll be brave, by Jessica Hische looks great (I’m in it for the typography). As always from the excellent Craig Mod and his On Margins podcast.
I’ve missed Tarantino. The latest trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood instantly gave me a Jackie Brown meets Kill Bill vibe. The music as always is completely on point. How he does that is like magic to me.
After listening to the latest episode of Hurry Slowly on the way back home today, I’ve decided that bringing some form of meditation into my life might be a good idea for the future. Does anyone know of some good places to start? I know of Kevin Rose’s app Oak, but it feels counterintuative to reach for an app when trying to meditate…
So far building & maintaining a new habit has absolutely clicked with my brain. As I see it my biggest challenge is breaking the bad habits. Going back to the start, identifying them and then putting a plan in place to break them.
The world continues to go to shit. I’ve heard prime ministers and presidents all over the world deliver speeches after these types of attacks (sadly they’re not rarities), they often come across somewhat hollow. Jacinda Ardern’s response was anything but.
📚 Finally finished Atomic Habits. Great book that I’m actually running through again to try and see how I can best benefit from all the wisdom inside it’s covers. I’ve managed to tweak some of my behaviours such that I am journaling every day without fail. I’m also hoping to get 30min writing ever morning before the day really starts. Tidying up the kitchen before putting the kids to bed. Flossing. The big one I am struggling with is the daily exercise.
Barak Obama never affected my life directly, however he existed in a world I understood politically. A world that showed what a leader could be. From any country. I miss the impact the right person has on the political landscape. The world deserves more.
I recently bought the K380 keyboard from Logitech. Originally intended to be used as a replacement for the generic Dell POS that is supplied at work, I can certainly see a place for this keyboard elsewhere in my life. The keys have weight to them. It has gravitas. A satisfying thumping sound that I am usually not used to on my MacBook Pro. It’s not that the MacBook Pro is a bad experience…far from it. It’s just that this Logitech keyboard offers a different experience that I really like.
Of course one of the annoying things about a wireless keyboard (as least the really minimal looking ones) is the fact that they are typically not backlit. Once you get used to that kind of feature, it’s actually pretty difficult to get used to living without it. The only other area that I would comment on is the fact that the key markings are not seamless with the plastic of the buttons. They are trying to meld into the keys, except they really don’t.
If you’re in the market for something relatively cheap that feels more expensive than it actually is, and that you’re touching all the time, the K380 is an excellent choice. Also it comes in a range of pretty funky colours, so as a minimum it will add colour to your desk.
Witch Hat Atelier from Kodansha Comics looks AMAZING. Coming out on the 2nd of April, think I’ll be buying this one when it comes out.
New issue of my monthly newsletter, In Abeyance, is out. Issue 002 is all about Photovoltaics. If you like the issue please consider sharing it with others.
Nearly had a relapse today by reinstalling email onto my phone. I’ve been ‘clean’ for 2 weeks and mostly loving the fact that I don’t pick up my phone a 100 times a day anymore - it’s down to 64 on ave. I have found the break liberating, although I know there is more I can do.
It’s letters like this, from Emmanuel Macron to the people of Europe, that upsets me the most about Brexit. At the very top there you can choose one of 22 languages to read the letter in. United for a better future.
Hey Baron Fig turns 5 today. My favourite product of theirs (which I own) remains the Three-legged Juggler. Although the Clear Habit Journal is a close second.
Picked this book from Ben Crothers, Draw in 4! Seems like a fun way of sketching little doodles every day.
Been reading Atomic Habits. Really practical book to read if you’re trying to make changes in your life. The biggest challenge is to try and process all the information in a meaningful manner. I think this one will benefit multiple reads.
Next week issue 002 of my monthly newsletter, In Abeyance , comes out. Here’s the cover for the next issue.
You’re still not subscribed? Go and fix that. If you’re wondering why you should subscribe, I’ve got you covered.
On a continued high to recapture my time to allow me to do other things, I finally dropped the cash and bought a copy of Hazel - I know what the hell was I waiting for? Maybe the fact that I didn’t know Hazel could look into files and extract information. Wait what!? I know 🤯.
Disconnecting from the internet until such time as it suits you is empowering. Just because we can have the internet at our fingertips doesn’t mean we should use it. unfortunately most of us will succumb to the defaults. A browser, an RSS reader, social media, our websites. All these things contribute to noise in our heads. Some noise is good but under our terms and when we choose to give away that attention.
I’ve found the last few days without these distractions on my phone incredibly enlightening. My phone has gone from a tool of consumption to one of predominant creation.
In fact the only thing that I consume is books on my Kindle. An app that has unfortunately languished in a folder to be opened ever so sporadically. I’ve also dusted off my actual Kindle and have been using it more often as a consequence. Reading and writing more on any device is a step in the right direction.
I also find myself more in the moment with my kids. My wife would forever complain about me not ‘being there mentally’ and she was probably right. By contrast, these days, most evenings I don’t even know where I put my phone when it’s time to go to bed (usually at the entrance from when I came home).
I honestly encourage everyone to give it a go. You’ll be surprised how little you actually miss out on.
Finally tried oat milk. Happy to report it not only tastes pretty good, but all the gunky stuff stays at the bottom of the mug, so it looks much better than using almond milk in coffee. Next stop is trying to cut out the bread in my life…soo hard, but actually necessary.
Yesterday was the first day that I put my phone in tool mode. Effectively everything that is a stream (including Micro.blog) has been deleted. Reeder? Gone. Safari? Gone (ok hidden but nowhere to be seen). Email? Gone. Notifications? Gone.
The upside is that I now pick up my phone 50 times less on average and 1 hour less.
So what do I use my phone for now? As it turns out, a fair amount.
Now I go to my apps and it’s with purpose. I’m not going in for the sake of going in. Doing so means I’m more available in the moment. When I check my emails, I go in, have a look and then move onto something else. It was a pretty scary feeling at first, but now that I’ve done this, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long.
Following on from my previous post, I’ve coupled RescueTime with some of the things I’ve learnt to experiment with based on the latest Kevin Rose episode with Jake Knapp. His new book Make Time feels like it’s come out just at the right time for me.
⏰ I’ve downloaded RescueTime for my Mac, iPad and iPhone (tomorrow I’ll install if for my Windows machine). My only quibble so far is the pricing of the service. I’d like to pay for the stuff I use regularly, but I feel $9/month is steep? I guess I’m relatively concious of adding yet another subscription.
☕ Almond milk in coffee looks disgusting …but it tastes pretty good. Ran out of normal milk…could this be a trend?
First bit of exercise I’ve had in months. No idea what’s happened to me recently but physical activity has taken a back seat to my creative endeavours. Something I know is ultimately not good for those very creative activities. Hopefully I’ll do this more regularly.
🚸 I guess this is part of the joy of parenting. Being there to see your two young boys play lego with each other building, destroying and discovering things together.
This winter has been a pretty poor example of healthy living for me. Too many sweets. No exercise and haphazard eating. As we get closer to the unlocking season I’m hoping to make a mental turn and get the derailed train back on track.
Oh man not been into Instagram in a while. What a shit show. Ads every 3rd or 4th image. Likes! Messages! Links! Comments! TV! The kitchen sink! Yeah I think I’ll pass.
There has been a ton of noise in my office about coding. I’m really liking what I’m seeing at freeCodeCamp (yay for proper camelCase).
Tachyons is a pretty awesome way of creating layouts and prototyping. Certainly one to consider for the next project.
My theme for the year is based around release. Last year was a year where I laid the foundations to allow me to release something new every single month. It’s a long year and plenty to come which is a great place to be in mentally - working towards the next release.
✉️ The first issue of my newsletter, In Abeyance, is finally out! Go have a read and subscribe if you found it useful. Hit me up with any questions or thoughts would love to hear them.
✉️ If you’ve not subscribed to my newsletter, now is a great time to do it. Subscribe over at www.stet.li/ia. The very first issue will drop on Thursday.
Here’s the cover.
Oh yes. Today is Groundhog Day. Bonus: If you don’t feel like watching that film, then you can always ‘celebrate’ by watching Russian doll instead…
You know that feeling when you wake up and think you’ve got school, but then your dad tells you that it’s the weekend? Yeah that just happened to Zane. Grin from ear to ear.
I like Austin’s thoughts on February resolutions.
⭐ Like many, I’m still dizzy after the firehose of Micro.blog customisation goodies that @manton unleashed. After a little internet research, this article on developing a Theme for Hugo seems like a good place to start.
🎙️ Really enjoyed the On Margins episode with Lisa Brennan-Jobs.
📚 Ikigai - The Japanese Secret to a long and Happy Life is the first book I’ve read in 2019. Well written, lots of great insight.
I have eyed iFontMaker with a considerable amount of envy over the years. I even considered buying an iPad just for it at one point. For font lovers out there, it really is a great app.
David Attenborough is an international treasure. This clip of Prince William interviewing him gives a brief insight into how astute and important his observations are.
🗞️ Excellent article on the New York Times, summarising the Arab League summit. The whole thing strikes me as sad when people cannot even come together to discuss the issues. What hope does this give the region and the people of the region?
I really hate being awake during the hour of the wolf. My mind gets filled with thoughts and getting back to sleep in pretty much impossible. Doesn’t help having a lot on your mind in the first place.
I really wish Feedbin also had the feature to convert Instagram user feeds into RSS in the same way that it does for Twitter. Then I’d be able to delete that account as well.
Jean’s goodbye to Facebook is how you should say goodbye online to a platform. If I did something similar when I left FB 5 years maybe I would have kept some of those relationships that I’ve lost.
Really looking forward to the Spoke Design/Penaddict collaboration pen. Housing a Uni Signo DX refill, it will likely be the first pen of 2019.
⭐ A year ago, on the 16th of January 2018, I wrote:
It’s always hard to start something new. The main question is whether or not you’ll see things through and actually find value and continue to use it as the initial shine wears off.
It was my first post on Micro.blog. 475 posts later, I’m glad to say that I have derived incredible value from the service.
I think the main reason can be attributed to it’s frictionless posting. The box doesn’t judge - you decide how short or long you want to write, add a title or not it’s up to you. It doesn’t offer any complications - no categories, tags, dates or URL naming. Just write and hit post.
Most importantly, the service has helped me take complete control of my online presence. Everything is now funnelled into kaa.bz.
Like many Brits, I’m glued to my screen watching the circus that is Brexit. My hope is that this proposal is buried and that somehow means no Brexit. I just want it all to be over and everyone can agree that it was a colossal waste of time & effort.
My 2019 Actions Calendar is now ready to be downloaded. This is the 3rd time I’ve created one of these but the first time I’ve released it online. I’ve found the design to be very practical. Hope you’ll get something meaningful from using it as well.
Working on something to share. It’s 12 days too late (and likely a few more before it’s done) but it’s a long year.
This is as wintery as it gets in Dubai. A mild 18°C. Have the window open and feeling the cold breeze coming in. It’s a real treat for us out here. Birds in the background. Good start to Saturday.
Sooo annoyed. My iPad is getting noticably hot on one part of the screen. Gone ahead and booked myself at the Apple store (although might go first thing tomorrow morning) and bought AppleCare as well as insurance.
I will be talking about my new project, Stet.Build. For now, if you work in the construction industry or are interested in architecture, engineering and the built environment I’d like to point you to my monthly newsletter In Abeyance.
Ryan is at another milestone again. Yesterday he began to stand up on his own. The whole thing surprised and delighted him as he laughed about it every time he did it. Give him a week or two and I think our little boy will start walking.
Been pretty quiet on the site, but that usually means I’m working on something. Should be ready to launch and discuss on Thursday. Super excited to share as it’s been in development for 8 months now.
I did a few of these images back in the summer as I was learning and developing my new style. With the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil things have gotten a whole lot easier.
Although I have a ton of thoughts about the iPad not being a Mac, this keyboard by Brydge really appeals. Mainly for times when travelling with both a laptop and iPad make no sense. Bonus, according to Snell the combination weighs less than an equivalent Macbook Pro.
Pretty sure you can’t upload a video to Micro.blog, but here’s a gif of the previous posted image. Might take a while to load though…
Great set of questions to work through and really help dissect your year that passed - via the excellent Studio Neat Gazette newsletter.
🍿 Finally got around to watching The Incredibles 2. Maybe the fact that I am now a father with 2 kids, this movie means even more to me now? Maybe the fact that every time I saw Jack-Jack I was reminded of Ryan? I was over the superhero parts, but everything else rocked my world.
My mind has been completely blown away by how great (and complete) Procreate on the iPad is. I only wish that Linea’s use your finger to erase could be used as a preference, because that feature is a usability slam dunk.
Ok I get the whole iPad Pro thing now. Thankfully I saw sense and got the 12.9" version. I’m likely going to be spending a lot of time on this machine over the coming years. The drawing apps are incredible and I’ve only just scratched the very surface of what’s available.
🎄 It’s Christmas Eve and the boys are in bed. Time to finish most of this truely excellent Rioja and wrap some presents. Looking forward to tomorrow. Merry Christmas everyone.
In 2019 I plan to finally start sending out a newsletter that I’ve been working on for around 6 months now. The start of this idea actually extends much further back than that, but I suppose now is the right time to ship.
The Hemingway app has been a true revelation to me.
The app gives me the tools to take control of my editing. My original document captures my raw ideas and thoughts. When imported into Hemingway, the document becomes refined and hopefully, more pleasant to read. What I love about this approach is that it’s a puzzle I’m trying to solve, one sentence at a time.
If you have any long form piece of writing, I highly recommend this app.
This is best illustrated by comparing the summary sections of the same document.
The full moon is pretty spectacular tonight. Soo bright it looks like someone left on the lights outside.
You know how for years the tech media proclaimed to have found the iPhone killer? Well, I have finally found the real iPhone-killer, she’s called my wife. Having destroyed 2 screens and a mic on the same phone, we called the phone bankrupt. Found a new sub-optimal solution.
Ok, I got myself an iPad Pro (12.9") for Christmas. I fear for the future of my art supplies. Seriously.
Been doing a ton of research on photovoltaic technology. What I hadn’t realised is that it really is a thriving field of material science that could have a major impact on the world.
Punkt is a company that I’m fascinated by. Certainly not for everyone. Their new MP02 mobile phone and Alarm Clock have me thinking of a world without an iPhone? Shut your mouth!
This post here is what I love about iA and iA Writer. Their priorities are clear. Their implementation might not be faultless but they have been at this for a long time and continue to improve, version upon version.
I am the mosquitos-killer 🦟 ! 2 in one night as they try to feed of the kids as they sleep. Not tonight f@!$ers! Not tonight!
Creating something meaningful is difficult. It takes patience and perseverance. I’ve been working on this particular article for 1 1/2 months. Feeling like I’ve finally broke it. Part of the issue was that I thought it would be a simple subject…except it really wasn’t.
Having a tough time with the piece I’m writing at the moment. However I’ve developed a very clear strategy that hopefully will mean that I don’t spend as much time cold writing on 1800 words again. Moving the needle every day is also the best thing I’ve learnt to do this year.
Can’t believe it’s been an entire year since my youngest was born. I guess the first one paves the way for the second in many ways. He’s easily one of the funnest babies I’ve ever met, with an incredible disposition and always smiling. Happy Birthday 🥳 Ryan!
It was great fun being on Micro Monday. @macgenie was a truly gracious host and may have put the podcasting bug in my head now that I’ve had my first taste.
Imagine needing to charge your iPhone, laptop or car every 10 days rather than every day! Really hoping this goes into production soon.
Having cut the cord on cable TV, there are two things I miss. Live sports and great adverts (I know). Thankfully Sandwich video has me sorted on the second of those. Their latest Vote.org and Fracture videos are great.
When I started using Micro.blog I decided to keep syndicating my words over to Twitter. Over this last year what this has done is created two urls on the internet with the exact same content which provided completely different experiences. Twitter is Vegas, while my site is more Bauhaus?

Usually I love it when both boys are fast asleep in their beds, this evening is very different. Zane is battling through a 7-10 day flu, while Ryan was ok but now developed a fever suddenly…it’s been a long week. I hope the worst is over.
So it’s been three long years since we moved to Dubai. At the time I’d just read Marie Kondo’s book and it was amazingly eye opening. We have a four day weekend ahead of us and it seems it’s likely going to be a miserable affair on account of the kids and wife having caught the flu. Mission to make this place lighter will begin tomorrow. Inbetween making the family as comfortable as I can, I’ll be throwing things out.
Drove for 5min this morning and a dreaded yellow warning signal comes up that oil is low. On the long drive down, a quick visit to the lube-me-up section of the petrol station and before coffee had been brewed, oil is topped up. Sometimes things come together.
No internet based network is whole. What I miss from Instagram is the output from visual artists. What I miss about Twitter are the writers, architects, companies, that offer their thoughts, ideas and news. What I get from Micro.blog is interacting with people.
Exceptionally fun pixelated tower from Ole Scheeren in Bangkok. I love when an idea is executed well. This tower could have been completely pedestrian, but instead it looks amazing.
Top tips all parent can agree on. The Yoyo stroller is the only one you actually need. Make sure your couch resembles a sacrificial lamb for the first 10 years of the kids life - think Ikea, instead of Crate & Barrel. The Stokke chair system is legitimately awesome.
I’ve not specifically sought out any Black Friday deals, but I did benefit from the 50% offer over at Proton Mail. Was going to get a paid account anyway, this came as a great and welcome surprise.
Now that one of my most requested features for Micro.blog has been made (a gallery of photos), I can finally kick my Instagram habit. The only thing that still ties me to Facebook is WhatsApp.
Depressing but astute assessment of the current state of Brexit. The surprising stat is the 700,000 older/young people change per year.
I don’t like to write about the system I’m using but I thought it would be good to check in a couple of times a year and see the lay of the land.
Micro.blog is a personal online publishing platform with a social layer built in. It differs from other publishing platforms in a few key ways:
I think that Micro.blog handles many issues in a wonderfully elegant fashion. However there is plenty of room for improvement. While I’m aware that @manton is but one person who is already doing a lot, it’s important to recognise that the sustainable thing is to have more than one person involved in the ongoing development of the platform, dare I say multiple people. To help him get to that ideal, the hosted option needs to become more appealing.
I’m not going to focus on any of the apps that have been made for Micro.blog (official or third party), as I see these as nice to haves. For me the canonical view is the one presented at the website. This is the view that everyone on the platform shares (regardless of operating system). I think overall the simplicity of this interface is what makes things work.
Items that I would like to see included at some point:
Photos should be showcased on a grid of three squares across. Ideally this should be another standard page found at mydomain/photos**.**
Micro.blog already is able to distinguish photos pretty well. Let me see my photos in a gallery. It’s one of the feature that made me stick with Instagram for as long as I did.
Micro.blog does not, by design, show the number of users that follow you. My view on stats is that as this site is focused on my words and pictures, then my stats should also focus on this output.
I would love to see a yearly view of the number of posts I’ve made on a month by month basis. Each month could have two bars showing how much stuff gets posted to my site and how much stuff is interaction with others.
Additional stats could highlight the total number of photos, posts and interactions. What is the number of people I am following (I can see this in the iOS app but not on the web).
The reason for this is simple. It’s gamifying the experience. Except I’m now in competition with my previous self.
This is finally being offered, but not officially (blink that reply and it’s gone)? I’d like to see a yearly subscription to the service become official.
Micro.blog by it’s nature has two streams. The first is your website stream, and only includes your posts, while the second stream is the social one that includes everyone you follow and your posts starting with an @ symbol. As a user both are important, yet they are given wildly different treatment.
Your contributions to the conversation are still your words. These are currently only found in micro.blog/yourusername. I would say that these should either be allowed to be ‘published’ to your blog as part of your stream or captured in a separate page with a link back to the original conversation.
I initially used to love the fact that I was limited in what I could do which was to play around with the CSS and that was it. Since then the addition of updating the footer has been added. A great additions for sure, but I want full control of my site. I’m paying for hosting, eventually I’d like to be allowed to control the whole look of my site.
I recognise that this is likely a much more involved design change, but it’s one that I think is important to provide as an option, so that there isn’t a pretty fundamental reason to go self host and attach an RSS feed in.
There are currently 9 categories that you can contribute towards. It’s a good start, but hardly what I’d call comprehensive. I’d like to see a great deal more categories. Architecture, Engineering, Comics, Stationary, Country-specific-categories, and the list goes on.
Clearly part of a much larger project, which may require the recruitment of moderators in this space, but again it needs to expand to allow people to huddle around the digital campfire.
I absolutely understand how things have improved over the last 10 months since using the service and that I’m effectively providing some ideas/thoughts about how the service would become even more enjoyable for me.
The new Smashing Pumpkins album is such a treat for us fans. Solara, Alienation and Marchin’ On being the stand out songs.
Years ago, while in London, I would often turn to the movie Amelie in an attempt to help me relax, try be more positive about the world and life in general. All these years later it still does the trick.
I’m kinda over stationary. Once you’ve tried a bunch of things and realised that you have what suits your needs (and more), the continued hunt becomes hoarding. I have one big purchase left before I close the book on this hobby for a while.
I always end up surfing the web looking at a bunch of awesome t-shirts. Then I realise that they’re all super expensive (once you add shipping) and just close the tab depressed.
The John Lewis Christmas adverts are an institution. The latest one is by far one of my absolute favourites.
Totally underwhelmed by the new Field Notes Winter release, Clandestine. The video though has got the best production values I’ve seen from them. Not for me though, as I’ve got enough FNs to last me 3-4 years at least.
Great trailer for Toy Story 4. I only found out that this was happening earlier this morning. Had the same feeling as Duckie there, alas they’ve won me over.
He had a great run, but alas Stan Lee has died.
First rain have come with thunder and lightning. It’s been such a long time since we’ve had any rainfall in the Gulf.
Awesome analysis of why tech companies are making custom typefaces.
🎙️ Seeing as I’m in the car for many hours of the day (travelling up and down to Abu Dhabi), I’ve been listening to a ton of podcasts recently….a metric ton in fact. Here are some of the highlight episodes:
The weekend is finally upon us and as always I’m hopeful of filling it with good activities for both myself and the rest of the family. It’s not so much living for the weekend as it making the most of the weekends which offer more time than the week.
It’s been an exceptionally tough week, which is to be expected as everyone is working on overdrive towards the imminent opening for Qasr Al Hosn in Abu Dhabi. Great video on the Twitter feed.
Finding your niche can feel like a life long struggle. Some discover it early on and continue to build on that discovery. Others meander through life until they settle. While other due to circumstance or ability never reach that discovery. You have one life. Go. Discover.
This weekend’s mini project was making an adjustable snake knot camera strap. Went for some funky colours as the paracord on offer had limited colours available. If you have to go bold, go all the way.
All of my writing happens in iAWriter. All of my editing is happening in the Hemingway app. If you’ve not used this app, go read the help section first then give it a try on something you’ve written. It’s eye-opening.
As much as I love October, really glad it’s finally over and can look forward to what November has to bring. Winter is finally upon us and I’m looking forward to enjoying the outdoors a little bit more. With both boys in tow I’m hoping for a bunch of fun over the next 6 months.
First proper halloween experience for Zane, which he absolutely loved. Got dressed as a pterodactyl, hunted for houses with their lights on and then stuffing his bucket with goodies. I’ve never been into Halloween, but starting to enjoy it through my kid’s eyes.
This new iPad Pro is a great way to finally get into the iPad lifestyle. Glad I waited out for this version (rather than getting one last year). Hopefully it’ll be my upgraded computing device for the next five years.
If you’re looking for a great alternative to the standard Apple case for your iPhone 6, 6s, 7 and 8, look no further than the Puro Icon case. Got mine in an amazing aquamarine colour.
If you’re struggling to write on your site, then consider a trick I’ve been using this year. I write for myself and 1 other person that doesn’t exist, except in my mind. He likes similar things as me, and my site is how I share small messages with him.
Went to the Big Bad Wold book fair (the biggest of it’s kind in the world). It’s so massive that people wander around with supermarket shopping carts filled will books. For my first trip I picked up:
📚 Autumn reading. Second Ryan Holiday book this year. I still need to write the notes from my previous two books. Maybe this week.
You’re testing me Apple. I’ve abstained from your iPhone ploy this year (even though I’m sporting an iPhone 6S), but I’ve never owned an iPad and I’m running a 5 year old Macbook Pro, which is closing in on upgrade territory.
If you’re looking to create something, anything really, then I seriously encourage you to listen to Seth Godin’s podcast Akimbo. The previous episode, You’re it seriously captures the reason that you should start NOW with that endeavour. Don’t wait. You’re wasting time. As am I.
Operation start using your iPhone less and take your Sony mirrorless camera everywhere is beginning to pay some dividends.
Discovered Burro Blanco in Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago. By far my favourite Mexican restaurant in the UAE.
Definitely considering backing this chopstick set. The straw might now be as useful for me, but I really like the chopsticks rest and pouch. Super neat solution.
Jan Middendorp’s Dutch Type is truly a magnificent book. I would go so far as to call it the best looking book on typography that I own. If you can get a copy, don’t hesitate. Gorgeous.
The constraint for Inktober this year is the number of pens I’m using and the size of paper, which are these super cheap postcards from Muji (12 for less than a dollar).
I can finally declare Autumn/Winter has begun here in Dubai. It’s been a really long summer so hoping to make full advantage of the good weather this year.
My wife is forever loosing her iPhone. Top tip. If you login from another device on iCloud (and assuming the phone is still got power and connected to the internet) you can cause it to ring, even if it’s put on mute. So awesome.
After listen to The Minimalists on the Kevin Rose show, I came to a realisation. In my persuit to determine which iPhone I should be buying this year, it turns out I really don’t need to get one after all.
The reason for upgrading isn’t because the phone is slow, lacks some essential feature or that certain apps don’t run on it. Rather the only reason to upgrade is for the camera.
Except I already own a pretty decent camera, the NEX-F3. I bought it just before Zane was born (so a little over 4 years ago now) and seem to have stopped using it 2 years ago. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe I bought into the whole ‘the best camera is the one on you’ ideaology?
A quick read of a Wirecutter article I bookmarked in 2013, led me to circling onto several Sigma lens that will help me get better photos. The bonus to all this is that they’re at a pretty reduced price point at the moment. And while we’re here, we might as well talk about one of my favourite article about photography to brush up on some things.
Netflix has seriously changed how I consume some of my entertainment. Thankfully Better Call Saul isn’t on that network which means I have to wait for a new episode every week. Somehow gives my week a little bit of relief as it’s the only show I’m watching these days.
I stumbled upon a truly incredible graph today that showed all the various types of Photovoltaic panel technology and their efficiency progress mapped across the years. What’s astounding is the innovation that is happening in this space, showing where the future will be.
Happy Inktober everyone. I’m hoping to dip my toe this year and have an idea of what to do, hopefully ready with a few things to share.
Everything old is new again. New faces in the office as our team slowly continues it’s transformation. I’m obviously aware (sometimes painfully) that nothing in life stays the same. When life kicks your ass, first tidy everything up and then assess and review.
Finally got the bluetooth in my car sorted out. It’s only taken a couple of years and $100 to get it sorted. I’ll never understand why Audi don’t enable this simple feature to begin with but there you have it. Now I can listen to my tunes through proper speakers.
It’s getting easier to draw these scenes. The funny thing being that once I gave up on drawing comics I’ve allowed myself to draw these types of things.
Ok I’ve not bought any new Field Notes in a year. I still have a healthy stash and could easily remain stocked up for several years to come….however these Ram edition are really testing my Field Notes abstinence.
These three F1 2021 concepts as revealed on the F1 website show a future of motosport that looks exciting. They’re also meant delivers to deliver closer driving and wheel to wheel action.
Rough couple of days. Zane caught something from school, which he gave to me, which I gave to the wife. The joys of a new school year I guess and all the delightful viruses that are given the opportunity to jump from one child to the other. Good news is it’s nearly over.
Not one but two great additions to iAWriter. Which reminds me that I need to take a deep dive into the Shortcuts app as soon as possible.
My favourite feeling these days is that moment I step into the house, after work, and my boy Ryan is genuinely happy and excited to see me. It never lasts very long so I’m cherishing these moments.
Was hoping to get the Hobonichi Weeks Mega this year. Sadly out of stock, 17 days after launch!
So when we bought the Q5 2 1/2 years ago what I didn’t realise was that although bluetooth was available in the car, Audi had decided that it would restrict where. Specifically music couldn’t stream that way. It’s taken me this long to resolve the issue with an overpriced dingus.
Following up from my previous post, sometimes you need some bad sleep for you to work out what’s already in your head. Ryan decided not to sleep tonight, but my brain kicked into overdrive this morning and I’ve settled on the style I’m trying to achieve. LOTS of art to come!
Well that didn’t go as planned. I’ve been working on a piece of art for my new project all weekend and completed 85%. When I finally had a look at it in it’s intended medium (email), I realised it was too busy and complicated. Back to the drawing board I guess.
First attempt at using my new style with architectural style backgrounds - always the intention really.
🎥 So the wife and I finally watched a movie together. We settled on Tully. Great movie. It will hit different people in different ways. It hit my wife the hardest being a mother of a 4 year old and 8 month old. Diablo Codi is one of my favourite writers in Hollywood.
🇯🇵 Hadn’t realised the extent of the destruction on Japan this summer. I have a huge soft spot in my mind and heart for the country. I truly wish them the best in what seems to be a never ending assault of natural disasters.
So the new upload function on Micro.blog is pretty awesome. Especially considering it works for gifs as well. The new Maus from Lofree is another design win from a company who’s really been killing it as bringing 1950s stylings to modern technology.
So I discovered Tadama today. Probably the most elegant and simple pomodoro app on the Mac.
🏀 A month ago I went to the basketball court and nearly died from the humidity. Which idiot decides to go play bball when it’s 95% humidity? This idiot. Anyway, today attempted the same thing again and can happily confirm that the worst is behind us and it’s now bball weather.
Ok someone tell me why it’s taken this long for someone (thanks bro) to tell me about The Weeknd and the Starboy album? You’re welcome, pass on the love.
Everything is a remix. This article on the inspiration behind Monument Valley’s levels is a great peak inside the process.
So now that Sunlit 2.2 has been released, I’m considering jettisoning myself from Instagram. The only missing feature for me is the ability to my photos as a collection of thumbnails (in the app or online). Hopefully that will come in future iterations.
I just read Khaled Hosseini’s Sea Prayer, and honestly haven’t cried this much since Alan Kurdi’s image was burned into my head. My oldest was roughly the same age. The whole thing just breaks my brain and emotions in countless ways.
UGhhh. Came back to my car, parking sensor in the rear had popped in. Need to find a way to pull this thing back in place without removing the whole rear bumper…YouTube?
Yesterday I asked for an alternative to Tinyletter and Buttondown was recommended. Having spent a day kicking the tires, this now joins a small pantheon of indie web services that I want to support. Need an email service that can join Pinboard, Micro.blog, Feedbin and Buttondown.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a good alternative to Tinyletter, that is similar in minimal functionality but is possibly paid? I’m having trouble sorting something out there and I’ve read that eventually MailChimp will be closing the service down…
Affinity Publisher Beta is out today! I’ve been waiting for a long time for this. With both Photo and Designer becoming my go to apps for digital creative work, this is the last piece of the puzzle. So excited.
Finally pressed the trigger on a particular part of my latest project - this is a long term endeavour but it begins with this very small step. I’ll be hammering through some details over the weekend and hopefully try and release it out into the big bad world soon.
Paul turned me onto Russell Brand’s podcast Under The Skin. I’m halfway through episode 03 with Adam Curtis and have the same feeling I do when I get through an issue of the Economist. Even Brand’s accent (not a fan) can’t hide the smartness and thoughtfulness on display.
The full Hobonichi Techo 2019 lineup is now live. I’m going for the Weeks Mega (for work) and an A6 Planner for life. I tend to like having more space to write, but having dates actually keep me coming back to fill them more regularly, compared with my current setup.
It’s always a joy when I receive an email from Matthew Butterick - go subscribe if type is your thing. His online book has been revised and I’m seriously considering using Equity for my next major project.
After declaring tidy office bankrupcy, I’ve managed to get back on track. I realised that I really need to Konmari the hell out of my office. Letting go of this stuff is the hardest but I know that it’s the ideal way to help gather my thoughts and focus my mind and attention.
Publii is a static-website-building tool. Scary rabbit hole to fall into. Looks exceptionally well polished and documented for an open source project that I’ve never heard of. Also, the themes are excellent - Mercury for photos looks great.
I started wearing the Mi Band 2, 4 months ago and found it to be one of the best fitness trackers I’ve ever purchased. Apart from a small glitch once it’s performed exactly as expected. Now that I have a decent data set, it’s time to change my habits to extract some benefit.
We are now well and truly back in Dubai. It’s funny travelling around town yesterday you could see a number of cars in the exact same state of complete dust cover after being disused for several weeks/months over the summer.
I genuinely thought I’d watched all of Chef’s Table. Somehow I’d missed the one for Alex Atala. If you’ve not had a chance to watch it, I put this up there with the one about Francis Mallmann (that crazy chef from Patagonia). Maybe I just really love South American chefs.
Oh man that was fast. So today I went to buy some vitamins (wife’s been hounding me to get New Chapter) and the guy behind the till asked me what my age was as I might want to buy the +40 kind instead…dude couldn’t you have given me a few days before slamming me with that.
39 years old today. Where did the time go? On this day I always mentally taken stock of where I am and where I’m heading. Priorities change, attention and focus shifts. Having said that I’m super excited about the year ahead and the clear (and achievable) targets I’ve set myself.
Trump’s Fall - My favourite part of this was definitely the Ernest Hemingway quote. I do think Kuttner is overtly optimistic, but you know, stranger things have happened - like Trump winning for example.
What really happens to the plastic you throw away is both depressing and the necessary jolt many of us need to take action for ourselves and our children.
Being raised in Greece, I obviously have an affinity to the place. Varoufakis has been an interesting voice to hear/read these last few years. This interview with WikiTribune (the 1st I’ve read) offers an interesting perspective on the whole situation.
Its been five whole years since Ryder released his Bullet Journal idea to the world and solved concentration problems for thousands. I can’t imagine using anything else to take notes at work. This system has worked for me perfectly.
Still deciding whether the whole web-ring is a good idea or just currently badly executed. I like the idea of pointing people to other sites, but the 🕸💍 doesn’t work for me. Also you could spend time on a site looking for the way out, only to discover that there is none.
My son has two modes, total fucking meltdown and an angel. Currently he’s melting down in the most spectacular fashion. As a parent it’s actually one of the hardest things as your sweet boy is turned into a total ass for 30 minutes.
Been looking for a replacement calculator for a while now. This simple Digit Calculator might be what I’m looking for.
A holiday is a time to get your house in order. With less demands on your attention, you can afford to spend some time to think a little about the future, all those issues and ideas you kept pushing back to a better time. That time is now.
On the weekend we drove up to the Shouf Biosphere Reserve. The only regret I have is that we didn’t even come close to experiencing the true majesty of the place.
I’m writing these things down to make the most out of any future visits as the human brain will forget everything eventually.
Unfortunately I had shown Zane a picture of the ‘supposed’ turtles that can be found in the reserve…as a complete lover of animals (I’m pretty sure he gets this from his mother), the poor little guy spent his entire time trying to find one while he was there. So top tip, don’t show pictures of animals.
My baby boy Ryan loved being surrounded by trees. Like absolutely loved it in a way only a baby can feel excited about something new and natural and pure, because it’s the closest thing to him in that sense.
I think the people behind the reserve have done a great job of the website and the overall information provided. The Shouf Cedar website is probably one of the best site’s I’ve seen in Lebanon. Sure it’s a WordPress affair, but it’s done in a tasteful manner. Make sure to take the time and run through all the information on the site to make the most out of your trip.
I genuinely liked the logo for the whole reserve and really loved the tickets you buy at the entrance to the reserve.
We ended up going through the Barouk entrance. While a lovely entrance, clearly not the main entrance, which is the Massar. However, there are no less than six entrances:
Here’s a handy map, that if you squint hard enough you’ll think is Lebanon, don’t be fooled (like I was the first time), that’s a map of the reserve itself. Once you get through the entrances, you have to travel around 5km into the reserve, park your car/bus and then you get to choose your hiking trail.
Obviously don’t expect to be able to eat anywhere in the reserve. I honestly didn’t consider this clearly. My suggestion is to basically either bring a good old honest picnic with you and eat at the entrance of the actual reserve (there are picnic benches) with a great view.
Don’t expect any 3G/LTE signal while you’re up there. If you’re going to be dependant on technology to get you to places, make sure that it can work offline. The website lets you download GPS maps as well.
Sun has just come up. The city is starting to fully wake up. I’m on my second cup of coffee and I’ve managed to read a decent amount from Ryan Holiday’s Perennial Seller. The one thing I’m lamenting this summer is not reading enough. Time to change that.
While it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you’re writing on your website for the ‘internet’, the truth of the matter is that you’re actually writing these things and obsessing about it’s design primarily and sometimes exclusively for yourself.
These words are a snapshot in time. Of where you were and what you were doing. They might be reflections on what happened in your day or what’s currently captured your imagination.
Why not just write this in a journal you say? Because ‘publishing’ something on a site provides a level of finality. A level of accomplishment that a mere text file in a folder, or a journal entry in your notebook doesn’t provide. Not that there is anything wrong with either of those approaches, rather the online published version is different.
One of my favourite new feature/plugins on Micro.blog is ability to create an ‘on-this-day’ page that collects your past posts that happened….erm, on this day.
The reason it’s so great is that it’s another clear tool, made for you. It’s made to allow you to reflect on what you’ve written in the past and what you were thinking 1, 2, 3 or more years ago. If you’re not using this feature, then you’re missing out on one of the joys about blogging, which is reflecting on what you’ve written.
Part 2 of the summer holidays begins. Breaking things up in this manner has been an interesting experiment in the psychology of anticipation. It has made the summer pass by faster, which is usually a protracted affair in the Gulf, where it’s hot (very hot) and dusty.
The James Bond museum, at the summit of an Austrian mountain, is the most elaborate fan project ever.
With a whole 10 minutes of using iOS 12, I can already tell it’s a Snow Leapard type of update. Subtle but useful features with the main story hidden under the hood making everything more snappy and pleasant to use.
Yes it’s ridiculously hot and I’m an idiot but damn if this isn’t the best work out I’ve had in months.
I’ve been waiting for Mateusz Urbanowicz’s comic work to drop. The wait if finally over with his 78 page graphic novel Yuragi.
It’s been a great long while since I’ve drawn anything. I’ve effectively given up on creating comics for the time being and concentrating on something else for a while. I am missing the act of drawing so I’ve decided to lower the barrier of entry a little to create a new habit.
I haven’t laughed this hard at something in a long, long while. John Oliver’s take on Facebook is an absolute classic and makes me want to eject from Instagram as well. C’mon @manton release Sunlit already!
The Hobonichi Techo 2019 Preview Festival is live. This was the first year that I didn’t get a Hobonichi, instead opting for my Cafe Note from Nanami, but might jump back this year for a few reasons.
Since April I have been working silently and diligently on my little project. I’ve still got a long while to go before I’m happy to share what’s been going on with me but I wanted to share my absolute recommendation for iAWriter as one of the best tools for writing projects ever made.
Of significant value to me is the ability to link in multiple text files into a single document. This has allowed me to reorganise the entire project several times over, as though it was a simple deck of cards.
This feature alone would be enough for me, but that is just the start of things. It’s super lightweight and opens instantly. It doesn’t have any font features (except choosing between a single font) and that helps me from wasting type. Although there arent' many templates to choose from, the basic ones included with the app do an amazing job of typesetting the work in a fashion that I can read/markup and edit freely.
Sure I would like a few features found in the Highland app, such as sprint timer, native fountain support, and actual comment support within the document, but this app provides me with so much and I highly recommend you consider it for your next project.
In other news, really looking forward to the lunar eclipse that’s happening later on this evening. I’ll be posting some photos if they’re not complete rubbish.
The Sons of El Topo is a sequel to the movie El Topo, by the genius that is Alejandro Jodorowsky. Catapulted to the top of my wishlist.
One of the single most powerful things that I hope to teach my kids, is to understand and appreciate the concept of consistent & incremental. This applies to aspects of themselves and in everything around them. As long as you increment on a thing you’re working on and consistently show up every day you will eventually see results.
The hardest part is to percevier in the face of no visible improvement and keep moving forward. Set your course because you know it is true and try and remain on it.
🎥 Just watched Logan. It’s obviously not as a great as the comic Old Man Logan, which for licensing reasons obviously couldn’t bring all the characters together, it definitely stands as one of the best X-men movies made.
A story of two tickets. On the left is a ticket left under the windscreen of a car with 30% tinting. On the right, 0% tinting. 😱
Really excellent article on common webpage design mistakes. I’m guilty as sin of vertical spacing atrocities and this served as a great reminder that this stuff matters if you care about flow and design.
One of the nicest things about using Micro.blog is the fact that you get to see the regular progress the service makes, week on week. In many ways it reminds me when Feedbin was a new service. Things will settle down eventually. For now, it’s constant change!
I truly miss the excitement and wonder that comes with moving to a new place. The discoveries that are available to you. The norms and food that is different. The lives that have existed and will continue to exist past your brief visit. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that.
I didn’t know The Economist is also available for the Kindle (US, UK and Germany only). First month is free and then a pretty reasonable monthly price (for me in the Middle East that’s a 60% saving). Easily my favourite news publication.
The Comics Journal is coming back to print. That’s probably the best news I’ve heard in a good long while. Easily one of my most satisfying magazine publications and has been sorely missed these years.
Watching Obama’s speech for the Nelson Mandela annual lecture. I truly miss the eloquence of a man with a story to tell, such a great orator. Probably the best.
While the Amazon web interface for your reading/editing your highlights and notes for your Kindle is fine, the Klib Highlight Manager is a significantly better experience. Highly Recommended.
Last few days have been a bit all over the place, which was not helped by the world cup final, but the excuse being it comes around every 4 years. Super excited about the possibilities for the coming month, hit my training hard and achieve a major milestone on my project. Go!
Back in Dubai without the kids and wife is weird. This is the first time since the kids were born that I’m away from them for an extended period of time. I guess I’m in good company considering how all the fathers follow a very similar line.
Also using wifi from within the airplane is crazy…I guess technology is bound to move forward wherever it can.
🎥 Finally watched Thor: Ragnarok. It’s everything you can expect and so much more (characters, story, visuals, humour, imagination). Haven’t had this much fun with a movie in a really long time. Big thumbs up 👍.
Last day of my holidays (tomorrow is a travel day so doesn’t really count). It’s been a bit short in parts but overall I think I’ve reset my brain a little bit. Spent a decent amount of time with the family (new and old), read a book and updated my Micro.blog.
It’s been 3½ years since I came to Lebanon. I’d like to say that things have changed here, but they really haven’t. The poor and tired infrastructure has been left in complete disrepair and it’s crumbling. Creaking under it’s own weight. The lack of town planning and proper governmental checks and balances continues to produce…ugliness.
The situation has been exacerbated by the influx of Syrian refugees. The sectarian wars that used to be played out in Lebanon have now achieved a much larger platform in Syria and the evil has spread far and wide. 12M displaced people and a whole generation of children being raised in poor conditions.
My fear is that if the situation doesn’t improve in a meaningful way, this region will only get worse and wars will eventually play out on an even larger scale. The region has been ripped apart for over 60 years, one country at a time (Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen have all fallen). Who’s next?
I’ve been decompressing these last two weeks. Part of my brain is getting a little antsy but as I have an intense period coming up, taking things slowly (and frankly lazily) might be the best preparation for the month ahead.
Years from now, when you’re older (and likely taller than me), I’ll remind you how tiny you actually were.
Every 3rd of July my Feedbin subscription is up for renewal. Since July 2013, I have relied on this service and happily pay the price of admission for a products that continues to improve year on year for the same price. Best RSS reader on the market.
For me the unmistakable sound of Beirut is the car horn which begins to propagate throughout the city early. The horn is used for everything:
Watch out!
Come down, I’m here.
Outta the way buddy, I wanna park.
Come take my order please, I’m waiting.
Want a taxi somewhere?
Finished reading: Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin, ISBN: 9781591843177 📚
One of the things that characterise holidays for me, is the ability to catch up on my reading. Top of my pile is extensibly an issue of The Economist which I generally lament not having the time to read more regularly when I’m not on holiday.
Went to a few of my old stationary haunting grounds. I came away with literally nothing. Either I’ve reached peak stationary or I’m content with everything that I have at the moment. Having said that there are few more places that will put that conviction to the test.
Sitting. Slumped. Forward. His arms crossed over the back of a yellow plastic chair. His head buried in his arms. It’s 7am in the morning but to him it could be any time of the day. Everything feels the same to him. Is he sleeping or has life defeated him? Broken.
I noticed something on Instagram today which signalled the beginning of the end. Endless account settings, IGTV, business accounts, metrics and then there is the ability to sell stuff. It’s becoming more Facebook and straying away from photo sharing; which was to be expected.
⚽ Really looking forward to the Argentina vs Nigeria game. Has all the ingredients to be one of the classic games of this tournament.
Awesome write up from @cm on how to use Blot with Micro.blog. I have a lot more to write about this subject, but I’ve been considering making the jump, mainly due to limited customisation options available for hosted sites.
✈️ I remember when we used to travel as a family, my dad would get properly stressed out and wouldn’t let a sigh of relief until he arrived and sat at the boarding gate. As a father myself, I’ve decided to take a different approach, with some of this mixed in for good measure.
Been on a bit of a deep dive with Seth Godin. This Ship It journal looks like a great way of allowing you to work through your thoughts to get to your reason.
I’ve now been wearing the Mi Band 2 for a couple of months. The data has given me the agency to try and change my nature tendencies.
Unsurprisingly the most useful metric I’ve found is sleep logging. When did I go to sleep? When did I wake up? How long was my deep sleep for - that’s the good kind of sleep right? Right?
Sleep or the lack of it definitely is what affects me the most throughout my day - I might eat more or less, I might have a headache or not.
The behaviour that I was hoping for the most influence is the amount of exercise I carry out. This is still an ongoing project as I need to carve the correct time in my schedule to do the exercise. Operation summer is going to try and finally get into shape.
The latest version of iA Writer for iOS is out. The two new features of note are changing the icon colour and being able to save favourite folders. Both additions only solidify this text editor as the finest on the platform.
That quote from Seth Godin is possibly the single best description of why you should blog every day. You write primarily for yourself. The fact that you might reach an audience is either irrelevant or a side bonus.
First, find a system with the least friction and then write.
⚽ Notes on the Iceland vs Nigeria game:
I’ve never been one to look up to people as role models and yet this quote, from Seneca, has stuck with me these last few days:
There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make the crooked straight.
— Seneca
Such a great metaphor to capture one’s struggle to improve yourself, or straighten yourself.
I stopped understanding this world back in 2016. The world’s tolerance to each other is exceedingly fraught and strained. This separating parents/kids shit in America is abhorrent but unfortunately just another example of the madness. And so my lack of understanding continues.
I have a ton of books to get through this summer. One that has catapulted up the list is Ben Rhode’s [The World As It Is](www.amazon.co.uk/World-As-… world as it is). As a bonus check out his interview on Pod Save the World.
⌚ The latest iteration of Mondaine’s smart watch concept is a solid design iteration on the previous model (the dial at the bottom always looked cramped). Definitely goes onto the same wantlist as the Erik Spiekermann editions I have coveted for a while.
A new edition of Blackwing volumes was just released, Vol.10001. Love the story behind it, but not really excited by the pencil’s stylings. Once I’m done with my current box, I think I’ll go for a box of the new 602s.
💬 I’ve been going through my Twitter archive, to determine what I should ultimately import and keep. A few points:
💬 I’ve struggled to define how I would use emoji on Micro.blog. I’ve decided that when I use them as a form of tagging, these will appear at the start of a post. Makes for more considerate reading when you can scan and decide if what comes next is of any interest.
⚽ This match is turning out to be a complete classico. This is what the world cup is all about. I’ve watched more football in the last 2 days than I’ve watched over the last 4 years combined. Totally worth it.
⚽ After some pretty heartbreaking matches for Egypt and Morocco, we’ve got the very first super match of the World Cup between Portugal and Spain. My money’s on Spain.
📚 I finally finished a book this year, Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs. The book was written back in 2009 (which I believe is now being followed up with a sequel of sorts) and was the right book to read, as the words have resonated with me, as a newly minted father of a second son.
I started it around the time my Ryan was born and it’s taken me 6 months to complete these 300 pages. I love to read, but clearly I don’t carve enough time to carry the action out. My reading has been pretty scattered across multiple books that I never seem to finish. I’m hoping this signals a return to a more regular reading pattern.
What I also realised was that I’m not happy with how I’m reading. Or more accurately, the lack of taking notes or capturing the most interesting parts of books I read.
Here are some key quotes:
Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted - not taught - to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?
Why else had they done it - built it all up so they could then knock it all down? After a marriage breaks, there is nothing more pointless than the child, to that child, of that marriage.
The song has to take you by surprise, catch you when your guard is down, when you aren’t expecting it - ideally, when you aren’t even listening to the radio at all. A bright little piece of your life passes you by in a car with the windows rolled down, wells up in the pain-relief aisle of a Rite-Aid. That kind of chance encouter can’t happen as readily on an iPod you’ve programmed yourslf.
When I was a child, I used to be in complete awe of the thundering father clap 👏. The kind that only a father can create. Yesterday at my son’s pre-school ‘graduation’ (any reason to celebrate), I’m glad to report that I was that father and my clap did thunder!
⚽ As we approach just 4 days before the start of the World Cup, these handy charts will be nice to keep in mind as the stats (and goals) start rolling in.
So the heat 🔥 has officially kicked into overdrive in Dubai, with the temperature hitting 45°C. No complaints from me as we had a pretty decent May, just need to get my good parenting hat on and come up with engaging activities that the boys can get into.
Vertigo relaunches under Mark Doyle with seven new series. The three series that jumped out at me were American Carnage, Goddess Mode and especially High Level. Love the trade dress which is very Vertigo.
My enjoyment of images is linked to presentation. A simple grid of thumbnails, not too small or large. Let the colours wash over me and transport me to that time and place. What I was doing? Where was I? With whom?
Dribbble and Instagram strike the right balance for this.
⚽ This World Cup guide to all 736 players on the Guardian website is nothing short of astounding. Works amazingly on an iPhone and will be used extensively over the coming month.
This episode of Revisionist History reminded me exactly why Malcolm Gladwell remains as one of my current favourite thinkers, (I include Ryan Holiday in that category as well). Go listen to the whole thing.
We made Zane’s first robot 🤖 that he could actually wear. It was all a bit last minute but I promised him we’d make more next week. Time to get some supplies in.
I thought it would be interesting to run some numbers on all the Kickstarter projects that I have backed over the years.
I started contributing to crowd funded projects back in October 2014. I’ve spent around $1300 over 3½ years and 19 Kickstarter projects.
Breaking all the projects down by loose categories, it’s clear I go through waves of interest. Currently I’m in a book and software buying phase and over the stationary phase.
| Category | No. |
|---|---|
| Accessory | 7 |
| Stationary | 5 |
| Books | 4 |
| Software | 2 |
| Video | 1 |
Diving a little deeper into each project:
What’s not on this list is the plethora of projects that I did not end up backing and a couple of projects that I ended up buying things directly after the kickstarter project was already over.
Taking the last column and summarising it a little shows me that it’s generally been a positive experience and I’m either using the products or aim to use them in the future:
| No Regret | Some Regret | Jury’s Out |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 6 | 3 |
Going forward my plan is, with regards to Kickstarter, to be a lot more discerning and selective in the projects that I back. Where I see something truly unique and special, that is where I should concentrate my efforts.
It’s been an entire year since I’ve had my messages on my phone connecting to my Mac. One. Entire. Year. Some bug or iCloud exentricity that I had to live with until I apparently don’t any more. That’s two technical issues I’ve been grapling with recently now resolved (the first being this one).
Today is Zane’s 4th birthday.
After Ryan was born late last year, I have gotten to know Zane and take a much bigger role in shaping the person he is and will be (until school and his friends take over). It strikes me how truly incredible the amount of time, energy, love, tears, worry, joy, sleep (or lack of it) goes into nurturing your child, yet feeling the need to do more as a parent.
Poochytown is coming out in July. If you’ve never experienced a Jim Woodring story you are doing yourself a disservice. If you’re looking to start early, make sure to pick up The Portable Frank, Congress of the Animals and Fran.
So many excellent thoughts and ideas to consider in this article by Ryan Holiday about how to write a book. Being knee deep in the process at the moment, this is a pretty amazing resource.
Does anyone know how to show the real return symbol on iOS? It currently outputs this monstrosity instead. I’m sure @gruber had written about this a while ago but I can’t seem to find it.
Updated:
I researched a little bit harder and found this thread. Basically you have to append a unicode variation selector after the html character. This forces the previous character to be rendered as text rather than as an Emoji Symbol.
Currently listening to Fatoumata Diawara’s new Fenfo album. Highly recommended.
Ryan is absolutely fascinated by music.
I stumbled onto this fact by mistake (it feels that parenting is a series of mistakes upwards). When he was only a couple of months old I would sing to calm him down. I chose songs I knew by Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden and Metallica.
We’ve now transitioned to the real thing which has (obviously) increased his verve for beautiful sounds, rather than his dad’s poor screetching.
I’ve spent all of 5 min with the new Obscura 2 app, but coloured impressed with what’s been created. Can’t wait to try it out more tomorrow. The write up by the app’s creator Ben McCarthy also deserves your attention.
You may have noticed that I’ve slowed down my posting on Instagram, likely not :). Either way my new preferred home on the internet is my own site, link in bio or go to www.kaa.bz - although I’ll likely keep posting here for a little while longer.
To say that I am excited about the new iA Writer 5 is a complete understatement. Thankfully the wait seems to be nearly over.
My inbox has been absolutely hammered these last few weeks in the lead up to some email privacy law changes in Europe. Hammered. Please stop.
My wife (every wife?) has been complaining that I spend too much time on my iPhone (she’s probably right). This Punkt mobile phone looks like something I will invest in (if I can get a twin sim in Dubai).
I’m so deflated right now. Got a lot of shit going on inside and outside work. Saw this quote this morning which I thought was pretty apt:
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
— Maya Angelou
After nearly 1½ years, I finally posted onto my Dribbble account. I like that it’s dedicated to the work I’ve carried out over the years as I moved from project to project (truth is had I used it more, it would have been a better record of all my projects).
This article by Ryan Holiday has seriously hit home at the moment as I move through my current project…which I shared a snippet of yesterday. I’ve written the list out and put it on my wall.
Finally! Ever since moving over to the UAE, I’ve sorely missed having FaceTime on my iPhones although I have had some success in using it on my Mac. With the (hopefully) imminent ban being lifted, communication might be going back to normal with the outside world.
Although Dropbox Paper is exceptionally well designed and is receives updates regularly, it’s lack of proper Dropbox integration and lack of 3rd party apps is mighty annoying. Is the API garbage to support? No idea. Wish they would sort it out though.
One of the prices you pay for living in the Gulf are dust storms. This is by far the worst I’ve experienced since moving over to Dubai 2½ years ago.
My engineering brain is thoroughly blown away by the Morpholio Trace app. I’ve been meaning to find a reason to buy an iPad Pro. I have literally no excuse now. WWDC cannot come soon enough.
These yellow Kaweco special editions (Sunrise and Sunset) are pretty amazing. Just as good looking as the Red version of the AL Sport (which is a North American exclusive?)
Bought the Mi Band 2 today. The main reasons being the price, 20 day battery life and limited functionality. Hopefully it will change my current behaviour and make me be more active than I have been recently.
We really do live in a world with a cornucopia of excellent text editors available on the Mac. My favourite editors are:
Now that the initial euphoria is over and I’m knee deep in the production side of things on the Project, you enter the realisation part. This is going to take dedication, hard work and most importantly, focus.
Seven. No, not the admittedly awesome David Fincher movie rather the number of years I’ve been married. The last few years since Zane was born have been more hard than easy but nothing worthwhile comes easily.
Yes I am watching the new Cobra Kai series; and yes, it is actually pretty good so far…
I’ve been thinking about why something like Micro.blog has caught on with me, when Twitter before it didn’t naturally fit and I think it’s down to the ‘arbitrary’ character length. 140 characters was too much friction for me. 280 allows my thoughts to spread a little bit further.
Importing my data from the various edges of the internet continues. Tumblr fell pretty quickly, Medium is half way there and now Instagram. My Twitter account is going to require some work, as are my historic .md files (from my older blogs). Having everything under one roof however, is amazing, highly recommend it.
Little strokes fell great oaks.
— Benjamin Franklin
Showing up every day and moving the needle forward.
I have been using the Bullet Journal Method for over 4 years (I know because I’ve kept them all). I’m going to buy the book in part to see if I’ve missed anything new as the method has matured and in part to hand out to people who still don’t know about it.
It appears that my hunt for a Gel ink refill capable of fitting into a Rotring 600 is over…mostly. While the Premec G2 refill seems to tick all the boxes; the only issue being trying to find a viable distributor that ships outside the US?
Of all the things that I’ve learnt this year, the power of creating a project by building a wall of notes, sketches and ideas is easily the most intoxicating. I honestly can’t get enough of this thing as I mould this project, one idea and thought, at at time.
The modest guide to productivity by Frank Chimero has come at the perfect time for me. I’ve also nicked his idea of putting ideas for my next project on the wall, literally as a way to keep me moving on the project.
Oddmar for iOS is easily the most stunning platformer on the iPhone…ever? If you’ve not checked it out, do yourself a favour.
Absolutely love this time in a project’s life. The very start, where the battleground is being drawn, the enthusiasm is at an absolute high and the ideas are just flooding in; as they get massaged and expanded upon constantly.
I’ve not been this excited about a singular idea in many years and I keep thinking about this quote:
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
— Anonymous
Every month the Dropbox team have been adding new features to Paper. The new templates feature is a welcome addition. However the fact that you still cannot control the email notifications you get when you share a document truly baffles me.
After listening to the Kevin Kelly episode of Craig Mod’s podcast On Margins you might find yourself thinking about listening to more from this Kevin Kelly fella. Thankfully he’s got you covered.
Can someone please explain to me why Dropbox in iA Writer doesn’t work like it used to (i.e file access), even though the original functionality exists in other apps? Why has Dropbox’s changes to their API affected some apps on iOS and not others?
Time for an evening walk. Need to chase away these demons. Plus I ate too much crap this year and really need to loose some weight.
Every day I put the oldest to bed, I look at the clock and I’ve got a few hours to myself…or so I think. I sit down on the couch and can barely keep my eyes open. Being a parent to 2 young boys is tough.
This concept of six seasons (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Locking, Winter & Unlocking) by Kurt Vonnegut blew my mind.
Looking at getting a 3D printer, either the Prusa i3 MK3 or the Robo R2. The issue is you’ve got to drop in excess of $1000 to start the journey — going cheaper apparently will turn you off the whole experience entirely.
The Gimlet Media website is how a podcast network should be displayed, all about the art (along with 4 links at the top). I’d recommend starting with Mystery Show.
Finally wrote my third article on RMO, Physical, Digital & Mind. I’m mindful of sharing this at the moment as I’m still working through it all, but feedback is important to me at this early stage.
For my short strings of words on the internet, I’ve consolidated to using Micro.blog. For all my long form writing, it’s absolutely impossible to beat Blot. Posting has a low barrier; editing something however is truly frictionless.
Cuba After the Castros is an incredible photo essay on the BBC. In my 20s I spent a lot of time reading about the Cuban Revolution and it’s players, so I found this article fascinating.
Struggling with the Sunlit app. The app allows me to post multiple photos & add text. With the HTML off limits in the themes, I can’t define how I’d like these stories displayed on my site. I don’t want 20 photos in a long vertical line. Need more display options for the site.
Related to the previous post, this article by David Harper is essential reading for anyone interested in Image Comics.
Just finished listening to the Todd Mcfarlane episode on the Off Panel podcast. I’d never heard him in an interview but this captures a lot of his views that I’ve read before.
So the new Oman airport is actually pretty nice. They’ve got some nice touches, except as someone in the industry, I can’t help but notice the lack of attention to certain detail. Also the bathrooms aren’t going to age very well…
The latest issue of Kottke’s Noticing newsletter is an ode to bloggers and blogging. Definitely bookmark this for future reference. Especially loved the key quotes which centred on the question of why we blog.
You may have noticed discontent amongst some Micro.blog users, in reaction to the latest iOS app addition, Wavelength, to the Micro.blog ecosystem.
The “argument” goes that 3 iOS apps and 1 Mac app later with no love for Windows, Linux or most glaringly Android is a sure sign that the network is doomed (or something else equally as dramatic). Then the knives started coming out, calling the apps suboptimal, which I feel to be insensitive and insulting. Manton’s actually handling this pretty gracefully, which is exactly the attitude I believe is necessary to shepherd the nerds without upsetting them.
I think it’s important for everyone to maintain some perspective. The Kickstarter ended a little over a year ago (back on the 1st of February). The actual service didn’t start opening up to register for a few months after that. This service has only been live for around a year. Lets review what’s happened in that time:
| No. | Project/Update | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Micro.blog released1 | 29 April 2017 |
| 2. | Jean MacDonald announced as Community Manager | 21 March 2017 |
| 3. | Micro.blog iOS app goes Universal | 21 June 2017 |
| 4. | Updated Markdown Support for Web | 14 August 2017 |
| 5. | Custom Web pages | 25 August 2017 |
| 6. | Overhaul of Web posting/editing | 22 September 2017 |
| 7. | Mac App released | 17 November 2017 |
| 8. | Micro.blog opens up past Kickstarter | 19 December 2017 |
| 9. | Sunlit iOS app | 07 March 2018 |
| 10. | Multiple Accounts | 26 March 2018 |
| 11. | Wavelength iOS app | 12 April 2018 |
Clearly the guy is a complete slacker. Clearly.
I can understand people being ‘upset’ about not having an Android app, but my view is this, if there is enough request then it will make business sense to officially support this platform. However, give the man some time to get there!
I would like Manton’s to spend time and complete the book. The reason for this is so that he can close last year’s Kickstarter and look to having another Kickstarter to maybe bring someone else to help him full-time with the development cycles.
I received my invite on this date. It was only 6-8 months later that I actually started using Micro.blog in any meaningful way. ↩︎
Notational Velocity remains my favourite apps ever. It was last updated 6 years ago. The Archive fills the empty void admirably. Don’t worry, you can hide the ugly sidebar.
I hesitanted to get the first issue of the Full Bleed ‘magazine’ from IDW, and regretted it. Issue two is on Kickstarter and there is a tier to get both issues for those that missed out the first time. Looks like the natural successor to The Comics Journal printed version, which I loved.
Zane’s first coherent drawing! Every ‘drawing’ before this has been a scribble. You have to start somewhere. Definite milestone. P.S It’s a horse of course.
In a different time, I’d totally be going to MEFCC this weekend. As I’ve grown older, I’ve moved away from being excited about this type of affair, although I would have liked to wander around artist alley. I’ll aim to take Zane next year.
Ok, I have no idea what I’m doing here. Somehow stumbled onto Netflix and I’m 5 episodes into the first season of Friends? It’s easy nostalgia in the background while I draw which is an interesting combination.
Anyone have any idea how to import all of my Instagram feed in to Mb? Ownmygram imported the last 20 or so pictures.
I’ve not read a Spawn comic since #75, but the 6th variant of Spawn #286 reminded me of the power Todd wields as an artist - even though his output is extremely limited.
Didn’t think I could find a better file manager than Finder on the Mac. I was wrong. Marta is lighter, faster and can even access zip files without opening them. Looks great and for some reason reminds me of all the things that made Notational Velocity great.
One of the things I really envy Last Week Tonight is their ability to come up with a wacky idea and then follow through with it. Case in point, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo.
Do yourself a favour and listen to the first episode of Craig Mod’s On Margins podcast with Jan Chipchase. Apart from a great conversation, I also learnt about the font Fedra.
I feel like I need to quantify that previous statement, because I might not be alone.
Over the last 14 years that I’ve been online I’ve meandered from platform to platform: Blogger, Moveable Type, Wordpress, Habari, Scriptogram, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Medium, Flickr, Instagram, Blot and now Micro.blog.
Listing them all like this it makes me wonder why I’ve had such a haphazard affair with something as simple as writing your thoughts online.
Throughout this journey I have either kept the words that I’ve written (or have clear access to these). The plan is to bring everything under one roof. The biggest challenge is deciding what to keep (what is really worth keeping). Will write a bit about my process once it’s all done.
In Micro.blog I feel like I’ve been given an opportunity, a second attempt at focusing my presence online.
While going through my Twitter archive, I realised several things which are going to greatly inform the way I write on the web in the future:
It’s pretty miserable in our household at the moment. The colds/virus/fever cycle has gripped every member of the family including our 4 month old…and it’s been going on for nearly 2 months now. Hopefully we’ll soon be over this and can maybe look to enjoy a weekend.
That was amazing. A 25 minute walk can really chang your mood completely. It started with a clear full moon shining (a rare sight in the middle of any city), followed by plants blossoming several months after they were planted. And just enough time to organise some thoughts.
I’ve been struggling with thoughts and issues on how to keep going (for a number of aspects in my life). This talk by Austin Kleon tackles this topic head first. His answer is found across 10 points ; you should watch the video to get a proper explanation on each:
Things coming together for the site. Going down the hosted Micro.blog route, I’m actually thankful for the limited access to tinkering around with the design of the site, which then allows me to tinker with what’s written and shown on it instead.
After a failed experiment in importing my Twitter archive, I had to individually delete them all (still going through the list), but what I found the best tweets were when I was describing my daily routine then, which is significantly different to my daily routine now.
I decided to import my twitter achive, which I now realise it’s littered with t.co links. I’m torn between sorting the links (over 2000 entries) out or just deleting them. They offer a narrative of my online activity over a number of years, which would be a shame to lose.
I think I’ve broken my micro.blog account. Imported 1800 tweets has wreched all havoc. Although the latest posts seem to be in my account, just not showing up on my site.
My experience with Tumblr fell short when it came to community. The service does get a few things right. All 3 sites I created years ago live on, even though I’ve practically abandoned them.
This story of older Japanese women are shoplifting to find community in jail is heartbreaking. As my parents have entered their retirement years, I’m always thankful that they have each other, especially considering both myself and brother don’t live in the same country as them.
These Atlas guides from Stripe should will come in useful one day — via my favourite newsletters, Offscreen Dispatch, which you should totally subscribe to if you’re not.
While searching for a pic of Michael Chabon’s Murse (man purse), I stumbled across this interview and an excerpt, thus proving that random searches on the internet can reward you with something special.
My current reading pile:
I decided to clean up my often abandoned Kindle (from general clutter). Of course sneaky Amazon doesn’t let you do that from the device itself. Nope, has to be done from the web…might as well visit the site? Maybe buy something while you’re there? Maybe too cynical?
There was a time when I would look at Formula 1 as the pinacle of technology mixed with motorsport. Now I can’t help but look at it in a completely different way because of Tesla. Whenever I’m driving my gas guzzler, and a Tesla drives by I see the future while driving the past.
Consistency and focus are the missing ingredients in my creative endeavours as of late. Pick a project. Pick a time. Get cracking and don’t let anything get in the way.
One of my favourite things about the series Love is the effective love letter the series gives to the city of Los Angeles; a city I’ve visited multiple times but found lacking in any real character. This series helps to change that perception.
The Posh Pen Paradox: when writers and artists fear their tools - I can absolutely relate to this. Be prepared to make a mess. The finished product will come somewhere down the line after you’ve made a legitimate mess first.
I haven’t checked out Panel Syndicate in a long time. In addition to The Private Eye, there’s another series by Vaughan, Barrier and Ken Niimura’s Umami. Clearly the name your price model has worked here.
Schon Design splatter pens - Going to become available online. Finally!
Hermetica - This kickstarter looks great. Already funded. Would not mind the book that gives the backstory to each of these symbols.
One of my favourite things about Mb is the lack of friction in posting. There may or may not be title requirements, no tags or categories, just words. The posts end up being effectively ephemeral, fleeting. The question is whether or not they provide you or others with any value.
Slowly getting my creative juices 🥤 flowing again. Also I have an unwritten rule, if iOS shows me an emoji in the predictive text bar, I have to use it.
Mother’s Day in the Arab world coincides with the first day of spring and Iranian new year (which has always made exceptional sense to me, as spring signifies the start of life after the winter slumber).
First day of waking up at 5am again since January. Get some coffee made and get down to it before the rest of the family wakes up.
Atari VCS - I didn’t even know that this was a thing. I saw a Mega Drive in the store the other day and I was super tempted, but I think depending on what this box is all about, I might break down and get one of these bad boys.
Just marking today as the day that I start exercising and eating healthy again. Been meandering for a while now and it’s not been a good look or feel.
BIG day for the stationary world. Mark One pens released from Studio Neat and new Field Notes. Both products I definitely don’t need, but actually really want.
And while I’m here, this Brass Hovel sharpener from Brahman Design really does hit the sweet spot of being a complete hipster sharpner of epic proportions. I didn’t back the KS but considering getting one now.
This pencil sharpener, extender and transporter, looks pretty interesting. I don’t think I’d personally get much use from it, but I like the thoughtfulness of the design.
Last day of my kickstarter subscription ok Mb. You’ve done your job well @manton will be a continued paying customer from tomorrow.
New pens coming from the Studio Neat boys. It was only a matter of time before they ventured into the stationary world after the succes of their Panobook notebook.
Only Slightly Exaggerated - a Studio Ghibli-style animation for Travel Oregon.
Don’t ask me how I went for this long on the internet without subscribing to Cool Tools.
Yup needed that. Netflix’s Love, is actually a pretty good show that’s just weirdly addictive. Wife didn’t like it, but you need to give it a little bit of time I guess.
Start of the weekend. Going to definitely get into my project for the year after it got totally derailed earlier this year.
Things are ok. Initial shock is over and I can concentrate on other things put some effort into areas that I can change and make a difference on. The act of rebuilding starts today.
Also related to the above, did not know about The Good News podcast.
Really great interview on Thoroughly Considered, with Max Temkin. Got me interested in actually purchasing a ‘copy’ of Cards Against Humanity. And while I’m at it, maybe something from Studio Neat - show my support.
Lost in Space - Amazing what Netflix is doing these days with their series. It makes the reboot from 20 years ago look like amature hour. Golden age of ‘television’ continues.
Top tip to all you kids out there. If you’ve got a young family, make sure to invest in some decent noise cancelling headphones to watch anything in the limited downtime without disturbing their sleep. Game changer!
It’s time to focus my energies on something positive. As a family we’ve had a rough few days, augmented by the fact that three of us have had colds/fevers of one description or another. Hopefully we’re nearly out of the woods on this and can get back to normal.
Woke up in a much better mood than yesterday, but after our supermarket run, Zane felt ‘tired’ which ended up waking up with a crazy fever that we’re battling right now. Kids man.
Sierra Leone Just Held the World’s First Blockchain-Powered Election - I’ve heard this as an example of where Blockchain could be used, other than currency, so it’s nice to see adoption beyond the initial idea.
I failed at something that I have been working towards most of my professional life.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow and no doubt I will have enough time ahead of me to review and analyses and do better in the future.
My biggest challenge will be to keep my enthusiasm.
Last night was the first moment shared by myself and my two boys. And a glorious moment it was.
Since Ryan’s been born, the activities shared by the boys has been somewhat limited. One is a 3 1/2 year old, while the other is 3 months old. Ryan though clearly has his father’s taste in music. To calm him down I’ve taken to singing to him alternative music from the 90s. We’ve just finished our Smashing Pumpkins phase and I started singing Fell on black days.
Having not heard the song in 10 years I thought it would be great to blast it out. I mean that’s why I have music subscription right? I’m holding Ryan and we’re dad-shuffling to the music. A which point Zane decides he wants in on the action as well, so he grabs his massive Ikea shark and starts moshing (I put the link in because I have no idea if this is what it’s refered to these days, wait…they’re calling it slamdancing? I’ll stick with moshing thank you very much) with it. And it all escalated from there.
Although different in an infinitely number of ways, the whole scene did remind me of that time Stathi and I were 18-19 and went to this club in Athens who either had an alternative night on, or the DJ is hoping to get kicked out. Anyway he was playing our music, which by this stage had fallen out of favour in place of some other pop shit. Towards the end/middle of the night there we were literally the only 2 people on the floor slamdancing.
I think my 18-19 year old self would be super proud of these two.
In case anyone is into Crypto, my brother runs a weekly publication over at diar.co Definitely go check it out for likely the best coverage on the subject - ok my last comment might be slightly biased…but not by very much.
Here is my Microblog wish list:
Micro Monday : Easy one for this week. Go check out Marcelo, @mmarfil Thoughtful and pleasant.
Man, I can’t keep my eyes open today. Hurricaine Zane (my 3YO) woke me up at 5am and wouldn’t go back to bed. Little terror only fell asleep now at 8:15pm. Evening practically gone. Better luck next time.
The Krama pen I mentioned 10 days ago, arrived today. I’ve not had much time to play with it yet, but my initial impressions are that the reasons for me backing the Kickstarter were valid.
The first quality that jumped out at me were the subtle details that show the manufacturers knew what they were doing. Having seen (and backed) enough Kickstarter machined pens, the quality of the coating on this pen reaches for the heady heights that a Rotring 600 provides, which is high praise indeed. No other Kickstarter pen has the same quality of coating.
It’s an exceptionally slight pen, no thicker really than a standard 6 sided pencil, so if you like heft to your writing experience, this really isn’t the pen for you. Having recognised the dimensions at play here, I ordered a brass version, which I definitely think is the correct way to go, using a different material would basically have changed the balance of the pen.
This is a simple pen, and that is where it’s beauty lies. The mechanism is a bit different to what I’ve seen for simple pens (like the Squire or Retro 51), but it’s done very well on this pen and the refill has no wriggle. Part of that I think are the tighter tolerances but also the fact that the back of the pen screws directly into the refill. I did not know that this was an option, but the fact that the pens are machined to consider these tolerances on a standard Schmidt refill is even more impressive.
The pen comes in a unique leather wrap, with a couple of brass rings that hold everything together. What I like about this approach (and yes I understand that I’ve paid for the packaging already) is the fact that there is no plastics involved.
From my brief interaction with the pen, I would certainly recommend this pen to anyone looking for something unique but truly functional.
On the iOS app for Mb, I keep activating the ‘menu bar’ while scrolling. Wish there was a way to reduce the sensitivity or even a different way to activate the ‘menu bar’ @manton
One of my absolute favourite tools for work is Dropbox Paper. Love the implementation and the overall polish. My only gripe with the service is the lack of being able to store those same files created into Dropbox directly…which is really weird.
Gotta say that I have been really enjoying Star Trek Discovery. Don’t particularly like the costumes but everything else is really polished. Still isn’t as strong as the first 3 seasons for BSG but few Sci-fi shows are.
So I can definitely say that apps like Flowstate actually work in making you writing things down. The quality of what is written is somewhat suspect, but as they say, ‘Write hot, edit cold’.
A new shipping company for independent artists, from the creators of Cards Against Humanity. t.co/pvz8ynJtH…
Hoban Cards produces elegant, minimal and affordable letterpress printed calling cards and stationery items. t.co/L4QDtNWIh…
Five stationary stores not to be missed in Taipei. Discovering stationary from a different place is easily one of my favourite things when travelling.
It’s actually raining in Dubai tonight, which is a thing since it only happens a couple of times each year.
Awesome. Zane dropped my 💻 and I think the screen is frakked. To be fair it is 4½ years old, but it could have lasted another year at least. Might have to replace it with an iMac and iPad Pro combination. First time I won’t have a MacBook…
Seriously fell down a rabbit hole yesterday.
It does feel refreshing to be back online and actually enjoying the process. I’m enjoying writing on a regular basis. I’m enjoying the conversations I’m having online, as people share links and thoughts that I might not have considered or known about.
The downside to this interaction is that my internet lizard brain has certainly kicked in full gear. What happens to me is that I end up going down rabbit holes and tweaking my site over and over again. I end up wasting an inordinate amount of time.
The saving grace for Micro.blog is the fact that I can’t tinker with the HTML and once I finally settle on the aesthetics of the site, I can revert to concentrating on more important aspects.
To try and combat this, I’m going to set aside no more than 30 minutes a day in the pursuit of these frivolous but fun moments. My capping that time, I’ll then be able to focus my attention on things that actually move me forward.
Ralph Breaks the Internet trailer - although this move is from Disney, it’s always felt like a thoroughbread Pixar movie.
Although I felt that yesterday was a washout, I was about to convert my CSS to variables and damn these things are great for changing colours on the fly. So the idea is to update the look and feel of my site every monthly. Here’s the first colour palette for March.
Ok, the boy is officially ill, we’re wondering if the baby’s going to catch it as well. Kids man. Will be happy when this winter season is over. It’s not been brutal (yet) but it’s been stressful with a newborn, who’s super susceptible.
Finally. Does this mean I might actually start watching F1 again. It’s been years since I did.
It’s that time of the evening where I decide to procrastinate for a little bit more than I need to. Seriously can’t bring myself to get on and do very much at the moment.
Great little resource for CSS snippets. My Mb site already uses a few of these, although I really want to see how to incorporate the etched text in there as well.
Excellent post from Brent on why Mb is different. Completely agree on the timeline (2005) and that @replies need help. No rush to get these things bottomed out. Good that they are being considered though.
If I had an iPad, I’d also have an Apple Pencil.
If I had an Apple Pencil, I’d also have a Kaweco Apple Pencil Sleeve (in black or Anthracite).
Found this via Josh Ginter.
Published nearly 3 1/2 years ago, Jason Santa Maria’s On Web Typography has been sitting on my shelf the entire time. Only really started digging into this over the weekend.
I’m sitting here at the end of the day wondering what to do with myself. I’ve absolutely shattered. Sure I’d love to draw, write or read but once the kids are in bed and I’ve done all my chores, I just want to curl up into a ball and sleep?
Finally got my notification for the Krama pen. That’s the thing with Kickstarter, they are presents to your very future self.
Considering it’s the shortest month of the year, the month of February has dragged on for me for a variety of reasons. I’ve also fallen off the wagon with regards to regular creative outputs, so it’s time to get my act back together on that and get into a rhythm.
Walking definitely kept the demons at bay. It’s been a rough emotional week. It’s always the case when you have little to no control over outcomes that are important to you, or at least seem to be important to you.
Walking definitely kept the demons at bay. It’s been a rough emotional week. It’s always the case when you have little to no control over outcomes that are important to you, or at least seem to be important to you.
Actually the series that jumped out at me are:
Also, the Humble Bundle Image Expo collection is out. Love this time of year.
Image Expo 2018 - this thing has gotten serious. Some pretty incredible looking comics coming out. Death or Glory is the standout for me.
Feedbin Upgrades - I feel very lucky to have Ben create and manage Feedbin’s future with such care. Makes paying for a service (and a fair price at that), a complete no brainer.
I’ll tell you what the most annoying thing about Mb is? I go to bed and the rest of America (and therefore the majority of Mb) starts to wake up…soo annoying.
Great little post and photo from Billy Corgan, on the two little girls (now women) from Siamese Dreams album cover.
Oh, just found out that Feedbin supports Mb! If only the Today Poster worked - it seems to be broken, (update: seems it works fine now) I’d be completely covered.
So I’ve written the second chapter in my online book RMO. This sketch was the first attempt at images to accompany the articles. Keeping this for postperity - still need to work on the alternative.
Also BIG’s website is super fun in that each project gets a pixelated icon, which I’ve never seen used by an architectural practice.
Had an awesome talk by one of the architects from BIG, reminded me of what I’m missing out on by not being in London. Fun project by BIG include the Lego House, the Google offices in London
The Blot.im website has been updated. Love the consistency with the updates. Between David and Manton, my presence online will likely continue.
Music of the evening is ‘Away we Go’ soundtrack. Such good listening for this ‘spring’ evening (weather’s definitely taken a shift this last week and winter is officially behind us).
Micro Monday @amit simply one of the good eggs on MB. Go follow him.
I am liking the new livery on the RB14. Matt pixel camouflage has got to be a first on an F1 car right?
Design is the process of going from an existing condition to a preferred one. — Milton Glaser
Heard this quote for the first time on the latest Thinker Talk podcast with Lara McCormick and haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Descript is the world’s first audio word processor, letting you view and edit audio as text. Superpowers for anyone that works with voice audio. t.co/qIkoAsnDo…
I missed out on the Picasso exhibition in Dubai last year, I’m certainly not going to do the same thing with the Dali exhibition. Open until the 22nd of April.
Honestly don’t know what to say to you 🇺🇸. Speaking as a father of 2, who’s about to send his first son to school, how you continue with inaction is beyond me. Once should be more than enough. My thoughts are with the parents who will feel this next month and the months after.
This is the download of the San Francisco font from Apple. Didn’t realise you could download it!
I knew of the Courier Prime font, as all my comic work is written in the Highland app. What I didn’t know about were the sans serif and code versions. Nice additions to the library.
Finally! After years of depending on Notational Velocity it finally stopped working. Thankfully FS Notes seems to have come in to fill that void, and the development is very active.
Range of tiny pixel fonts that can be used.
🙇 @manton github integration went through perfectly. Nailing the basic features dude, nailing them.
The aim this year is to try and complete at least 2 projects this year for RMO. One digital and one physical. I’d also like to get some comic stories done as well, although these are decidedly less of a priority.
Just discovered that then fountain pen emoji 🖋 has not been used on micro.blog - well apart from right now. Hopefully this can be the start of this community.
Every subject has it’s own niche of enthusiasts that rally behind it. How much of say the stationary community do they even know about? What about the comics community? The Engineering community? Sure the Apple and design community may have dispersed.
Also, Google Reader being killed off was GREAT! I get to use the amazing Feedbin instead. This is the 5th year that I’ve paid for it. I subscribe to at least 100 feeds, but that is after some major pruning over the years.
While I’m on this Dyson kick, he’s got a new book coming out later this year called Dyson on Design. I can’t seem to find a Kindle version of his autobiography, I’m going to need to hunt down a paper copy. 📚
Oh did you know Matthew Butterick has a newsletter? Go subscribe. He’s also he’s got a new store, MBType. Equity looks amazing.
Just finished listening to James Dyson’s interview on How I built this (excellent episode btw), he let out that he’s building an electric car. Then there’s this interview on the FT. If James Dyson getting into EVs doesn’t excite you, you’re wired wrong (pun totally intended).
What I’m really appreciating about Mb is how much better it is than blogging back in 2004. Back then we used to rely on pingbacks to tell someone else we mentioned or linked to something they wrote. This is infinitely better. Except that I don’t have a copy of my @replies…
One of the fundamental challenges I faced towards the twilight years of my original stint of writing and publishing on the internet (that was nearly 10 years ago now) was the very fact that I didn’t have a singular focus. As my focus meandered, it became a challenge to continue writing meaningful words to capture those ideas with any regularity.
I remember trying very hard to find a focus, even started writing exclusively about Tesla, before I got bored of it all and annoyed people by cluttering up with Facebook feeds with re-posted articles I’d written. By trying to shoehorn myself and the little audience I had, I effectively lost the drive to continue.
This time it’s different. Very different. There are several reasons for this:
For the last year and a half, I’ve been working in the background on capturing these thoughts and putting them into a coherent document. At the time I thought that the best way to get the ball rolling would have been to buy a domain name that I liked and then start a website — no matter how crude. This was the first version:
It didn’t work. It sat there, unloved, for an entire year, which is just as well. Last year was by all accounts a tough year for me, but this allowed the idea to bounce around in my head. To learn about Stoicism, to regroup and rebalance my thoughts on these ideas that started back in 2016. Sometimes time and space are an essential partner for letting thoughts mature.
If you’re interested in learning more about RMO, head on over to www.rmo.life
Really enjoyed Kevin Rose’s interview with Rocksteady over on Block Zero podcast about Turtlecoin Also great looking website.
Obviously really looking forward to Alto’s Odyssey. Surprisingly my favourite part of the trailer however is definitely the music.
A lot has happened in the open web since I last checked - as you’d expect. What I find curious though is how little others outside this niche know about it. In a similar way that I have no idea what’s going on in the Crypto world. Everything is a niche these days.
Online services I’m currently paying for:
| Service | Yearly Cost |
|---|---|
| Feedbin.com | $20 |
| Micro.blog | $60 |
| Blot.im | $20 |
| Domain moonracket.com | $15 |
| Domain rmo.life | $27 |
| Domain kaa.bz | $20 |
| Total | $162 |
Considering Fastmail which adds $30-$50 per year.
You know when you live in a large city, things happen around you and you have no idea about them, sometimes till late? World Government Summit here in Dubai? Incredible list of humans at this thing. Including Malcolm Gladwell and Kevin Kelly!
Maybe I’m going to need to drop some hard cash for Marsedit now that I have a site again. Maybe, maybe.
Finally using Deseatme to get rid of all of these blasted accounts! I’m everywhere….and using none of it.
Awake every night with the baby’s first feed. Problem I’m having is I don’t know how to go back to sleep. Need to train body to get back to sleep faster and stop my mind from wandering aimlessly.
Congrats to the iA team on their successful Kickstarter to bring the app to Windows. Can’t wait to get my hands on the Beta and can’t wait for the new update to the Mac version as well.
Now that I’ve kicked the micro.blog tires for a few days, I can safely say a couple of things:
Currently trying to finish off Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs - bought it at my favourite second hand bookstore and it’s been a really great read so far. 📚
Here’s what my home screen looks like. Trying the blank app hack to see if the lowered icons stick. My biggest take however is that paring down my phone for this sort of limited usage has been liberating.
I tried reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, but the format didn’t click (although many of the words did). Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic however is going down like a cold glass of water on a hot summer’s day.
It’s been a super interesting week for my internet life. After pulling away from it all for a significant amount of time, I now believe I’ve found the necessary tools to get something out of it. This micro.blog is my therapy of sorts (some of the more deeply personal stuff is bound to stay hidden somewhere in my journal), and RMO is pretty much my ideal setup for writing and editing long form (mainly due to the control the app affords me over the layout).
So for now my internet output is really split across 3 main locations, each with very specific goals:
Everything else can either be syndicated or deleted when the time is right.
My knee is absolutely killing me at the moment. It’s progressively gotten worse over the last month that I can’t ignore it any longer. Seems a doctor’s visit is in my future. Urghh.
As I start to rekindle my love for writing and publishing online again (I’m still trying to decide on another word to blogging, a term I dislike the sound of), I’ve decided that I actually don’t want to clutter up my feed with a linklog - even if this link log has some exceptionally witty commentary. I’d like to keep this particular site dedicated to my more thoughtful digital explorations.
What I hadn’t considered was the power of the system that I actually have in place already in my Pinboard account. Interesting links already exist there. The only part of this system I’ve not really been using is the description or notes section. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here.
What is really annoying to me is that I’ve had this Pinboard account for 6 years and never thought to invest the time in it before now.
I finally got my Kickstarter backed ‘Single Edge’ razor handle from Supply today. This is actually the second time that the package was sent to me, as the first set was lost in the mail. This usually doesn’t happen to me, but thankfully the guys over at Supply were gracious enough to hook me up with a full replacement.
The packaging did completely take me aback. It’s unashamedly aping Apple’s packaging. I know one is offering high tech gear, while there other is a razor handle, but I do wonder if the “homage” was taken a little too far in this instance. From this videos, an alternative packaging seems to have been made (possibly for the previous version?), which I actually prefer as it calls back to a time when these injector blades were widely used. I think the ‘heritage’ should be celebrated more.
The first thing you’ll notice about the handle itself is the sleekness of it followed by the sheer weightiness of it - this thing is heavy. The other thing that you’ll notice is the lovely little manual on the inside that goes through a bunch of interesting aspects that you should consider. Patrick and Jennifer are effectively trying to re-educate us on a style of shaving that went out of fashion, only to be replaced by electric razors and 5 blade disposable garbage from the supermarket.
Having shaved with it, I can say it does give you a very close shave. I’ve been using double edged safety razors for nearly 5 years now and while those shaves were infinitely better to what I was using before, this makes my skin much smoother. The draw back however is that in order for it to do this, it might irritate the skin - maybe only until my skin gets used to it?
To complete my pledge, I also opted for the marble bowl. It has ridges at the bottom. My shaving cream of choice is Taylor of Old Bond Street, Sandlewood, which was first introduced to me by my brother in one of our care packages - I’ve been hooked ever since. The combination of the two created an amazingly smooth and thick rich lather.
It’s not every day that one enhances their daily routine of shaving. If you’re going to do it, go all in.
Over the years I have bought a slew of Apple related products (for both myself and my wife). We are an Apple family.
Can’t help but be completely excited by the Falcon Heavy’s success (so far). I wasn’t born during the early years of NASA, but I’m alive during what seems to be the next phase of humanity’s reach for the stars.
It’s that time of the year again. New Kickstarter for the Pen Addict live show. Quick thoughts:
So I’ve been wanting a place to call my own for a long while now. The problem was I let the plethora of options overwhelm me. I really wish this site sticks with me and I enjoy the process and anything else this community has to offer.
In case anyone is wondering I’ve restarted writing. Starting very slowly and hopefully building some general momentum. Will likely be only dropping links on here on occasion
Absolutely love this print and Max’s style in general.
It’s always hard to start something new. The main question is whether or not you’ll see things through and actually find value and continue to use it as the initial shine wears off.
Little Ryan (Rayan in Arabic) was born on the 10th of December. Zane now has a brother to torment, fight with, love, play and grow up together.
I know I’m late and likely not going to achieve 31 drawings, still this exercise has been liberating in many ways. #inktober #inktober2017
Never seen a tree come back to life before. This one was left from the previous tenant. 1 week later stuff is beginning to happen. #life #trees
I know I’m late but I’ve been moving houses and work has been pretty crazy still #inktober #inktober2017day11 #inktober2017
I know I’ve missed a bunch of days but I’ll catch up soon. Here’s the first one. #inktober #inktober2017 #inktober2017day9
Can’t wait to tuck into these - once I’ve finished meditations #marcusaurelius #stoicism #essentialreading
So 5 minutes before I drew this I was like - I’m done all my ideas are gone, and then pencil hit paper and the drawing practically drew itself. #inktober #inktober2017 #inktoberday6
No idea where these are now coming from. I’m just letting my pencil move, where it takes me I’m finding out with everyone else. #inktober #inktober2017 #inktober2017day3
Got off to a couple of false starts this year, but actually think I’ll follow through. Plan is to do the drawings in pencil. If I feel like it then I’ll jump to ink at some point #inktober2017 #inktober2017day1
Summer reading. What’s on everyone’s list? #reading #summerlist #drawnandquarterly #darkhorsecomics #prettymucheverything #draplin
WIP Moon Racket! It’s been a few months since I drew something fun. Sketched a bunch but no real finished artwork. Hope everyone is having a good summer so far.
Notable part of this installation is the use of the newly minted #Philips #DubaiLamps - along with the new #Microsoft Dubai font you can see the city trying to increase its soft power
Decided I’m going to read all of my comics first before I even consider buying something new. First up is @artofmikekunkel Herobear and the Kid. First started reading this when it first came out over a decade ago? In my mind the perfect successor to @bonecomic although there should be MORE! Also go buy his limited edition print. #herobear #comicsreview
How my youth was spent - some amazing works, along with some pure garbage. Will dig deeper #comics #imagecomics #wildstorm #marvelcomics #dccomics
Testing my rusty as hell water colouring chops. When you start at the bottom there is no place but up #characters #comics #watercolour
It’s all happening on my desk today. #watercolour #fieldnotesbrand #comics #characters #moonracket #midorimd
Definitely getting there. Next post will be for the inks #moonracket #drawing #comics #characters #moon
My first #RMO project finally has come to life. Limited to an initial print run of 50 - moo.co.uk did a decent job, although corners are busted - good thing I have plans for those ;). #make #create #calendar #stationary
You don’t need very much to create. Paper, an @fieldnotesbrand pencil and the best mechanical eraser ever made. Will keep posting progress picks #pencils #moonracket #space #cartoon #comics
A great looking pin and a personalised thank you note - good mail call today @melvastype pin looks even better in person!
Desk snap. Been a while since I’ve done one of these. #monoclemagazine #alphonsodunn #dudekmoderngoods #nockco
When you’re much older I’ll look down at that corner of the desk with your teeth marks and scratches from your toys and wish I could relive these moments again and again. Love you little guy. #zane
Newest of photos. A collection of well worn (otherwise destroyed) toys from Zane’s collection. They’ve served their purpose well @. First up, #Dusty from #Planes
Tofugu is a Japanese culture & language site. Every once in a while you stumble on something on the internet that makes you smile.
I’m not really in the market for a notebook sleeve (got one a couple of years ago, which works ok), but this one from Bellroy made me look. Comes in my colours as well.
Excellent find today - Taste of Italy. That’s the beauty of Dubai, you can live here for a year and every single weekend you can discover new things and places.
10 points if you can guess where I am headed to today - it begins with Sa and ends with rajevo…..wait what?
Dubai sun. Summer is slowly coming to an end (another month or so if we are lucky). Got to come up with inventive ways to get out of the heat. Atrium time.
That moment just before you demolish a plate of octopus - so great #limassol #marina #cyprus #fish #pyxidafishtavern
It’s been a while since I read a paperback - the Kindle has all but removed the need for that, however every once in a while you see something and it feels worth immortalising with a dead tree version #books #scottadams #howtofailatalomosteverythingandstillwinbig
Everything Else Enhancement Kit looks amazing. Still struggling to think whether or not I want this or not. It’s a great looking package, but along with shipping, we’re talking $79. Add the price of the book, and it’s a $125 investment.
Doodling some postcards. Who knows might run some form of competition to get these in the mail. #moo racket #sketch #competition
I have to say that the pomodoro technique is working wonders for me and my creativity - seriously 25min bursts plus 5 minute breaks is the way forward
It’s the little touches that you remember when staying at a nice hotel. Elephant towel was a nice surprise #waldorfastoria
Sometimes the hidden gems are found when you’re looking for something else. Ripe Night Market at Barsha Park was awesome.
#MOE baby No not the Ministry of Environment (looking at you #Qatar) no I’m talking Mall of the Emirates
View from the hotel. Goodnight people and may you all have a 2016 with more ups than downs - and may the wars in the world go down in number.
Doha International airport - so soon old friend? See you tomorrow… Arghhh my carbon footprint at the moment is truly terrible
I’ve not published any Moon Racket! In a while, but couldn’t help myself. #superbloodmoon #supermoon #bloodmoon #moonracket #webcomics
Panel #3 of my new series. This is going to be decidedly different to my previous series. #makecomics #wip #comics #webcomics
It’s been a year already? The latest lineup for the Hobonichi Techo 2016 (in Japanese for now) is online. Unlike last year, where I was completely taken by the buzz and the excitement of something new, I now know what to expect and more crucially what I like and need.
The A6 size hasn’t worked out for me as I would have liked. I found myself running out of space on occasions, or ended up looking to complete my thoughts elsewhere. That’s going to have to change if I’m going to use this book as my catchall for everything. I am a huge lover of the A5 size, and while the ‘Cousin’ version of the Hobonichi planner is in fact all in Japanese, it’s functional enough to not be a problem.
The biggest draw for this notebook is the paper, which is without equal. I’ve tried many different papers this year, but the Tomoe River paper has stood out as the undeputed champion when it comes to making the most out of inks and pens that I use.
The Hobonichi Techo will remain my notebook of choice, where I dump all my thoughts and ideas into a single place. The only bad thing is that I now need a new cover - the new ones are a big disappointment, so I’m looking to Etsy for some alternatives. Top of my list are these covers from StrideRidge - and they’re actually affordable unlike some of these ‘official’ covers on offer.
Super excited to finally get some #boulet - sure it’s in French but I’m not even letting the language I know the worst stop me from tearing through this #forthewin
I just published the first full colour Moon Racket! strip, Taking a Minute. I’ll be getting into my overall setup at some point, but this is a decided shift from me as I have until now published only in black and white.
This is not a sign that I no longer believe in black & white, but maybe rather the strip is better served on the internet with a splash of colour - I’ll report on whether that theory holds water after a few of these have gone out, but my feeling is that this small change will make a noticable difference.
As this is still the first one, like with most strips, there will be an evolution of the colour art as I get more comfortable with the process and try different ideas.The only downside, is that the Moon Racket! website will now have to be tweaked slightly to capture this colour palette (which is slightly different from previous iterations of colour that I’ve used in promo art).
I know it’s been a while, but I’ve been working my ass off at the moment, putting finishing touches on a range of items. One of the things I’m currently working on is the coloured version of the characters.
One of the comments that’s been made to me is that the black and white version of the strip is holding back potential readers. Some just are not all that into glorious black & white comic art - it feels, unfinished. This week’s strip will be an experiment to see whether or not that really is the case.
I’m considering using colour in all future Moon Racket! Strips. This is actually the second colour iteration (previous one was a bit drab). #colour #color #comics #affinityphoto #webcomic #moonracket
So we got some take out today (Briyani) and it came in these awesome glass pots (completely OTT) but was looking for a pen pot and sticker haven, perfect. #recycle #stationary #fieldnotes #pen #briyani
Yay for homemade #pizza it’s been years since I attempted one - the kicker on this one, veal sausages
I’m super excited to announce that the first installment of my web comic (now in it’s second season) Moon Racket! is finally online after months of careful beavering behind the scenes.
To overcome the issues I described previously with regards to Tumblr and image size limitations for Retina screens, for those with an awesome screen you can check out the Retina Version.
I’m super excited to announce that the first episode of my web comic Moon Racket! (now in its second season) is now finally online. Link in my profile. Go check it out. #comicstrip #comicstrip #moonracket #webcomic #blackandwhite #copic #unipin
I got a bunch of Shinhan Art pens last week. I was so excited to use them that this little image popped out in a matter of minutes. One of the most encouraging things about sticking with a bunch of characters is watching their evolution happen before your eyes. There is a confidence that I’m aware of and actually really enjoying experiencing at the moment. I just wish I could do this more regularly.
Been on a kick with these pens recently. Just trying out a bunch of options and colours - one of those rare times the tool push you to create more. First time I show Alfie with a red mouth. #comics #corgan #alfie #moonracket #characterart #characters #webcomic #shinhanart
Woz thinking about what he would like to stamp next #characterdesign #moonracket #characters #woz #comics #shinhanart #pittpen
Quick doodle to test out my new Shinhan Art pens - so good. #shinhanart #stationary #doodle #moonracket #corgan #comicstrip #characterart #characters
Ever since I ‘relaunched’ the Moon Racket! website I’ve not been particularly happy with the footer. I always knew that it would have to change. My initial use of the footer was to effectively send people to different parts of the net that related to all things Moon Racket! - the Twitter account, the facebook account, the newsletter and this process blog. All of these links have now moved to the very top of the website, in a nice menu bar, that’s out of the way, but fully accessible if needed.
I received some negative feedback, when I publishing the first season, that sticks in my mind. It was from a woman that didn’t really understand what was going on in the series. On reflection I totally get that. At the time I couldn’t do anything about it, as the stories and art had been created. I knew I had to do better with the second series.
In an attempt to make the series more accessible, the stories have been written to not be as presumtive, but also the website should be first time reader friendly. To address these two issues, I’ve decided to use the footer as a What You Need to Know section, complete with character head shots and names, using those sketches from the previous post.
I’m always passing this fucking teddy bear at Doha airport thought I’d finally take a snap of it #neopan400 #doha #teddy #teddybear
Not sure how the idea came about, but this is effectively Alfie’s first appearance.
I needed a colour that would pop against the grey backgrounds that I was using. I also remember that after I drew him I realised that the little guy was an organic being and so would need an air bubble to breathe through while on the moon…please don’t argue with my logic, it’s fragile.
This is also the only time that Alfie would be drawn this small. All subsequent drawings have him coming to Corgan’s shoulder.
One of the things that has been completely invaluable to us this first year of Zane’s life has been the show Baby Einstein. Living away from any family that can help us with the boy has been a challenge at times, but these 22 programmes have acted like a baby sitter of sorts to keep him occupied briefly while we do things like eating our dinner, cleaning up the kitchen or putting a laundry - you know the super exciting things in life.
Zane loves these characters. Something about them strike a real cord with him. So when his first birthday came about, I knew we had to celebrate with them. I’m planning on getting the art behind these characters made as a print soon to hang up in his room.
What’s amazing to me is just how great the cake came out, it’s a technology I’ve seen used before (as I was reminded by my wife), but I’ve never done anything with it. Here’s to many more happy birthday’s Zane. What a year it’s beeen.
Logo for a mystery project I’ve been working on for several months now. It’s early days still, but wanted to share the process I go through for creating a logo. Started off in a Fieldnote (Two Rivers edition if you have to ask), then moved it over to a Muji A5 notebook and then into Sketch.
Partially inspired by this video of Mr.Draplin - although our A’s go in different directions.
Since I did Corgan, thought I’d try a new pose for Alfie as well #moonracket #comics #characters #characterdesign #characterart
Practicing in the dying days of May. Unlike #Westeros winter never comes in Doha. Summer is coming… #comic #copic #shinhanart #inking #sketching #webcomic #character
As a comparison to my previous post and to showcase the character’s progression I quickly whipped up a sketch of Corgan in his current guise (in full colour).
Continuing this series of posts on the evolution of characters from Moon Racket!, this is first full sketch of Corgan.
What’s facinating to me is just how much information was captured in this one image that I don’t even remember creating. The main features of the character are there, such as the white boots, the shape of the head and the eyes and most importantly the colour palette that was chosen.
The neck reduced in height significantly in later iterations, but this has always been a general favourite sketch of mine because it helped define the world I am trying to create in many subtle ways.
The image that started Moon Racket.
The incredible part (when you consider the physical and hardware constraints) is that it was all created on an iPhone 4. I’ve written about this before (probably on my now defunct Facebook page), the intention was to create a super simple character that could be easily drawn on that tiny little screen.
As time went on, the character evolved. While I now find him incredibly easy to draw (and can tell instantly when I’ve not done a good job of my lines), that wasn’t always the case.
In fact the first year of Corgan’s life, I wasn’t super comfortable with certain aspects of his drawing him (so much so I remember the very first strip, I thought to trace him as I spent long on the first panel, but quickly realised that I was being stupid and foolish).
Traditionally I’ve been a huge tinkerer of my websites. Thankfully I turned a leaf last year and decided on a structure and function for each site and only allowed time for enhancing or correcting initial laziness.
For my personal musing site, I recently updated the CSS code to benefit from some of the theme editing functions that Tumblr provides. The whole design of KAA was intentionally completely text based to allow me to have infinite colour combinations.
As a fun experiment, I’ve been taking screenshots of the various colour schemes that I come up with.
Of course, the fact that I’ve not actually written anything meaningful on there for 5 months begs the question of why the design is even relevant, I’m just glad it’s there for when I eventually pull my finger out.
As this is a process site after all, I’ll be posting many more of these collections as I start to publish the new season.
This is one of the first images I ever drew using blue pencil lead instead of standard graphite. It’s also one of the first images that shows all the recent iterations of the characters are located in one image.
This image however was done pretty quickly (over an evening in fact, pencil to ink) and was meant to be a way of flexing my muscles. I didn’t even know what the characters were saying to each other (or why). You can read the final strip here.
My biggest error (and I don’t know how it got through) was Woz’s stamp, where the perspective is all wrong. Sometime you just need a simple idea, which lets your pencil move - what you sacrifice for this freedom of movement is that the end result might not be as polished as you would hope.
Inking for season 2 moving at a reasonable clip. Got tons more to do but this is actually one of the most enjoyable points for me (when I don’t make many mistakes)#inking #ink #comics #comicstrip #moonracket #comicbook #cartoon #funnyanimal #space #moon
The inking has begun on season two. This is my favorite part of the drawing process. Where the art starts coming to life.
The inking she has begun. Probably my favorite part of the drawing process when everything starts coming to life.
A whole bunch of awesomeness came in the post today. #midorimd #midori #fieldnotes #leather #leathercase
Just released, my Moon Racket! Newsletter. Subscribe at www.tinyletter.com/moonracket . Link in my profile. #tinyletter #moonracket #comics #webcomic #comicstrip
Trying something new in the run up to Season 2. Those strips are taking a long time, while these one and done take a couple of days (I’m trying to not be too precious about the mistakes). Let s see if I keep it up. #moonracket #inking #midori #unipin #helix #comics
Was inspired after the binge watching. By far my favourite comic book character. Show lives up to my high expectations, casting is sublime. #daredevil #ink #hobonichi #netflix
It’s been a while since I’ve done some digital artwork. This is a work in progress shot of a print I’m making for my boy Zane. The only thing that will calm him down is Baby Einstein, so this felt like the right kind of thing to put up on his wall.
Made using Sanelma, Hoefler Text and Affinity Designer.
And the other part of the doodle. First time I put all these characters together. #moonracket #midorimd #midori #ink #comics #cartoon
Doodles and sketches on a Friday. #fabercastell #ink #comics #moonracket #unipin #uniball #midori #midorimd
Something I’ve been working on for Zane. First piece of digital art I’ve done in a real long time. #baby #babyeinstein #disney #affinitydesigner #vector
We’ve had the worst dust storm in #doha so it’s kinda nice seeing the car cleaned up. I still think you loose 10 years from your life when you drive a clean car
My new obsession- blue lead. Man I wish I’d discovered the joys of this simple addition to my arsenal 6 months ago. Live and learn. #bluelead #rotring600 #unipin #drawing #inking #moonracket
The #nexus pen finally arrived today. Initial thoughts.
#nexus #namisu #fountainpen #pen #stationary
Breakfast of champions. Happy Mother’s Day, Happy No Ruz, Happy first day of spring #noruz #mothersday #breakfast
Corgan’s been through some tweaks ahead of the release of Season 2 of Moon Racket. Super excited to finally restart publishing this series soon. #moonracket #ink #cartoon #comics #webcomic
Love customising my memo books. First time I do something to a Fieldnotes #fieldnotes #memobook #gellypen #whiteink
Best shave I’ve ever had - courtesy of my care package of @faboualfa that shaving cream is a revelation, and that brush is soft as a badgers arse - love the weight of the Merker razor #razor #merkur #sandarwoodshaving #bristolandbadger
A few things about this pen holder from @clickypost :
And I love it
10 minute sketch of Corgan to just unwind a bit last night. Inks and colours coming soon #inking #blackandwhite #comics #moonracket
I absolutely love these Oryx sculptures at the Qatar international airport. These should become mini souvenirs. #qatar #ndia #hia
Tools used this holiday break. Was able to draw 10 strips for season 2 of Moon Racket - and have thumbnails for the rest of the season. I had hoped to finish the art last year but taking my time with it means a better result - will start posting random panels soon. #kaweco #unipin #retro51 #sakura #shinhanart #tk4600
I’ve waited a long time to finally use my hobonichi techo let the journaling begin. #journal #hobonichi
I’ve eaten a lot of great burgers - you could argue that you can easily find a ‘better’ burger elsewhere, #classicburger is by far one of the most enjoyable ones for me.
Been nursing a terrible cold since the night before landing into Beirut - reading material while I get better. #computerarts #theoutpost #harukimurakami
Examples of cultural heritage that is being lost in the name of bullshit residential “properties” in the heart of Beirut. For shame you architectural criminals.
In Beirut for the next few weeks. Trying hard to fall back in love with the place. Three years ago it broke my heart and mind which has never really healed. #beirut #hamra
Twinkles. Sometimes you need to spend some time on a particular character, over and over and over again. You develop a rhythm. It’s not until I finished this image that I feel comfortable enough to draw these characters in any situation.
Got myself some #baronfig notebooks for Christmas. Shipped them in via #Shopandship - got some thoughts about both theses things and will share at some point #notebook #stationary
Meet the Twinkles for me series www.moonracket.com no two expressions are the same. An exercise to keep me going. #ink #moonracket #cute
Received my Takumi pen. Best thing about it is this photo:(. Pen doesn’t fully meet my expectations but I realised I didn’t like a few things about it after I backed the project. #takumi #pens
We didn’t originally hit it off (that’s me and this Sailor Procolor 500) but after a bit of nib widening (just with my fingers) it works an absolute treat. Thin line but smooth.
Inkaday #3 - More Jetpacks
Because it’s clear I can’t get enough of Corgan with a Jetpack here’s a back shot (one of the few times I’ve done this kind of angle).
Inkaday #2 - All the Cheese
My favourite part of this exercise is sketching and inking something within minutes of each other. The final outcome will only get better as I get more used to these characters.
Inkaday #1 - Where Am I?
Inktober is over, but like I said, it was fun to do and actually pretty useful for me (more to follow). I’m calling this whole process #Inkaday. The constraint is the size. These sketches are done in small Moleskine Cahiers (they’re cheap, available and reasonable for what I’m trying to do here.
Moon Racket t-shirts finally arrived. There really isn’t anything quite like creating something in the digital realm and then seeing it manifest in the real world.
These turned out exactly as I wanted them to, from the fine folks at Printful. Highly recommend these guys if you want a short run done.
Inktober #7 - Flying High
I know it’s not October anymore, but I had 2 more sketches that I managed to squeeze during the month, which will bring the grand total to 8 inked images for 2014. At the very least I have something to beat for this month. I enjoyed the process enough to continue trying to do a small sketch as often as I can. Even cracked a new notebook just for this purpose.
Getting back into Instagram. It’s all about Moon Racket www.moonracket.com
Inktober #6 - Take Off
This was super fun. No idea where it was going until it finished. Sometimes it’s good to take a journey and you don’t know the final destination.
Inktober #5 - Retro Signs
Something a little different for today. I’m working on the logo for Corgan’s workshop, for the new season of Moon Racket!.
Inktober #3 - Loose yourself in the music
The liberating thing about this exercise is the speed with which these sketches come out. The quality could be better, but getting the idea out is more important.
Inktober #2 - Me and my buddies
Inktober sketches continue. I’m actually trying to work my way through a bit of a backlog but I am keen to deliver on this fun exercise.
For this sketch I’ve combined another exercise I’ve been doing recently - illustrating my Moleskine cahiers.
Inktober #1 - Eastman
Sketch of the new and improved Eastman (the character formerly known as Stan).
Where the magic happens. Everything (apart from my computer) that I use in the creation of Moon Racket!
Super excited to finally have received these in the mail yesterday. I did also have one third t-shirt made in a slate colour with the Moon Racket! logo on it, but unfortunately there was a printing error on that one, so I’m waiting on some replacements.
Having said all of that, there is a unique joy in having designed something and then seeing it as a physical object, even if it is as simple as a T-shirt.
Hobonichi Planner
I didn’t even know that this was a thing until recently. It’s not only a thing, but it’s a beautiful thing. I’m still deciding what cover I should be going for but I definitely know how this little planner will work in my daily routine which has been missing something like this for a while.
These go on sale on the 1st of September.
I’ve had a Pinboard account for several years now. I’ve used it reasonably diligently over the years, but it’s been one way. Links get put into it, but are hardly every taken out of it.
Own a part of history with the very first official T-shirt for my comic strip Moon Racket! Disclaimed #1: There might be a small (ok, a very substantial) amount of hyperbole in the first part of that statement.
I absolutely adore these adverts created by AMC as their markers for the upcoming Emmy awards - see the rest of them at the Hollywood Reporter. One of the things that I’ll miss about Mad Men (when the series is over) are the colours that are attached to this world.
There was a time in my life where I remember that I resented change. It was something that I later came to understand was actually a major component of life. Major change can either come in regular doses, or can wait dormantly, in the shadows for years.
Change is everywhere at the moment.
We’re gearing up for our first baby’s imminent arrival, which has honestly completely consumed our every free moment.
At work, yesterday was Naresh and Max’s last day onsite. I sat next to Naresh for the last 2 years as we saw the building go from a hole in the ground to something much, much more. We’ve effectively been in the ‘trenches’ together (at least the engineering/construction trenches) and while we’ve not come out unscratched, I think we’ve both learnt an incredible amount, from each other.
Don’t fight change. Embrace it. Life will be easier that way.
So while I was searching completely different, I realised that out there on the internet was an archive of all of my posts for Broken Kode. No this isn’t the wayback machine. It was actually my implementation using Scriptogr.am, which I’d completely forgotten existed. Sadly it seems that the people behind this service seem to have abandoned the project. The support site/forum are no longer there. The Twitter account has not been updated in a long time, and the Founder of the project appears to have moved to Pinterest.
Several things did grab me:
The reason for thinking about a backup was that I felt that the rare moments where I wrote personal posts where the posts that stood out the most for me are the ones that I want to capture and keep. Some of the highlights of the past 10 years that captured massive transitions in my life.
And that is the reason for writing something longform and personal. Social media doesn’t really allow you to do this. Social media is fast food. Disposable. Quick. Makes you fat.
Is it dead? Or is it going to be die soon? I am talking about Scriptogr.am. The truth is that there are obviously some hosting costs associated, the files are pulled in from Dropbox, but clearly something is not right. The support site doesn’t exist. The Founder left for Pinterest.
When I rediscovered this site, I was actually super happy. Nothing had changed. I was able to look back on my 1800 plus posts from the last 10 years (roughly speaking). Sure my meanderings on Tumblr were not captured, but to be honest these were not really significant.
What I did realise however is that I like the fact that if Scriptogr.am does cease to exist, all of my information is with me in my Dropbox folder. Sure they might be formatted in a particular way, but the words are there.
The other thing I realised was the fact that all the link notes that I created were noise. I didn’t care. I also didn’t care about these kinds of posts, the ones that are referiencial to the actual blog itself. What mattered to me were the intimate posts. The ones that I discussed things that were serious and personal to me. Probably not the greatest medium to have these words online, but definitely something that I could look back on.
I’d completely forgotten that this place even existed. I had imagined that my archives from Broken Kode were lost to the sands of internet time. NAY!
What does this mean? I’m not sure. I’m in the process of transitioning/closing Broken Kode. khaledaboualfa.co has replaced that, so it’s a question of whether or not I just move this URL here and continue writing here.
There are distinct advantages to posting on here, compared with Tumblr. I’ve long tried to tie that particular ‘platform’ to my writing, but failed to do so. Maybe this will be the change of scenery I need?
The best thing to happen to Google Reader is it’s death and the creation of Feedbin. Such a great service. t.co/vvtT9olQf…
When you reflect back on a year, the hope is always to find a number of moments that put a smile on your face - thankfully these last 12 months have given me with a lot to smile about.
Getting the news that I am going to become a father was the definite highlight - a fact which I’ve honestly not wrapped my head completely around, but I’ve started preparing1.
Creatively this year is one of my strongest in recent memory. I drew an entire season of Moon Racket, a slew of additional promotional images and designed the website - although it’s going to get some redesign love in the new year. Surprisingly the comic work didn’t end there as I completely rewrote the script for Chroma (my upcoming comics project) that has been many years in the making.
I redesigned this here site for the umpteenth time, however I do believe that this iteration is by far my most mature attempt and probably one that I will likely not change fundamentally for many years to come. The aspects of the site that I am most happy with are the colours and the typography, which is the first time in many years that I am ahead of the curve in certain respects (small caps only valid in certain browsers, surprisingly not Safari/Webkit proper).
Finally I started work on two iOS apps. The first one, we’ve scrapped and shelved, the other I hope we get some traction in the new year and we finally ship something, because as we all know:
In creating Moon Racket, it was very clear to me early on that the lettering would have to be a character in itself. My initial attempts at lettering involved hand lettering, in the end I opted for some great fonts from the Comicraft library.
In early 2012 I was working on an app for iOS with my cousin. The second company name we came up with was Codanauts. I loved the name and came up with this logo over a weekend. 2 months later my cousin found out about Codenauts. There is a subtle difference if you missed it: Cod-a-nauts vs Cod-e-nauts.
Oddly enough they seem to have stopped their operation and our operation never took off. I still love the similicity of this logo and hope to use it in the future.
Look what I got for my birthday, now on my drawing table. I also got the amazing Sigma 30mm F2.8 lens which this photo was taken with.
Muji Stationary - Sometimes the best stationary is also the most affordable. The A5 notebook, and 0.38mm gel ink pens have been my stationary loves for many years.
Bullet Journal - It’s not very often that something comes along and blows my mind. I’ve been struggling with a way to keep my notes organised with a way to reference them at a later date. This system looks like it could be the perfect ticket.
Type Hunting
What a truly wonderful resource this website is. You could honestly spend hours looking at this Tumblr site. Love the logo as well.
While I’m down this rabbit hole. Otomo senior (that’s Katsuhiro Otomo) is releasing an omnibus of 4 shorts under the ’Short Peace’ banner. Was released a few weeks ago in Japan.
Here’s the trailer.
And a short film of how Shohei Otomo goes about creating his art. The most interesting part for me was the glove he wears that he uses to remove excess ink from the ballpoint pen.
Omega Co-Axial Chronometer Advert Possibly one of the most enchanting ‘movie’ adverts you’ll likely see. The song is perfectly chosen, while the work that’s clearly gone into this 70 seconds is nothing short of amazing.
The Black Beetle, Anatomy of a Font. I love Nate Piekos and his Blambot website has always been a great resource of comic book fonts and instructions. This feature on the Dark Horse website shows just how much work and effort goes into a comic page from a letter’s point of view.
A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary. While listening to the latest episode of the New Disruptors (one of the best podcasts if you’re not already listening), I was introduced to the works of Erika Moen. What I find truly beautiful about this comic, which is true about most online comics series, is how much better they get from the first page, to the last page.
The transformation is one of the most encouraging things to see as an artist myself, because it humbles you and reminds you that Rome was not built in a day and needed perseverance and that an artist needs to learn and actually maintain their craft.
In preparation for the release of my upcoming online comic ‘Moon Racket’, I’d really appreciate the help in spreading the word. You can either like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.
I’d never heard of Ilya Birman until this weekend. Forebruary is his latest project, however any of his other projects are easily just as impressive.
The Moscow Metro map is particularly great; clearly the man is a little bit obsessed with all things underground/metro related but it’s my kind of obsessed.
Tumbling Tips - As I continue down the Tumblr rabbit hole, these tips are a good collection to start from - I’ve already implemented a couple of these on the site.
The Toyota efficiency story on Kottke, really made me smile. I remember going to a Toyota talk in Greece, some 3 years ago when this business management process was talked about. This is a beautiful example of reviewing how something is done, make some minor tweaks and then creating something infinitely more efficient.
I’d never heard of Limbo until today (strange since it won an Apple Award last year at WWDC). In any case, the game has now been ported over to iOS. Available on the App Store.
Sober writers love to use fancy shit like semicolons. Nobody likes to see a semicolon. I see sobriety stains all over writing these days. I think, “Damn, this piece has a chance to be good but the author is too busy looking at their pompous smile in the mirror.” — Damian Sowers.
Ever wonder why old time writers like Hemingway seem so much better than the 21st century crop? It’s because they were plastered out of their mind and kept sentences short and passionate. Also, no fucking semicolons.
— M.G. Siegler
What a load of bullshit. The semicolon is one of the most elegant building blocks in the English language.
When I was a kid, I used to take my toys apart as I tried to understand what made them work. The internal mechanisms fascinated me.
Todd McLellan takes this to a whole new level, and his forthcoming book ‘Things Come Apart’ is definitely a celebration of people with a fascination for the internal mechanism of designed objects - or kids like me.
The Road is Long. Having not had a chance to play with iOS7 (yet), I can only go on what others who have tried it are saying.
From Michael’s post it’s clear that the road is long before the final release of iOS7 in autumn.
The latest version of Byword 2 was released yesterday for all devices. The most exciting addition being the ability to publish to Tumblr directly from the app itself. I’m not completely convinced by the new yellow accents this new version brings however (mainly found in the radio buttons).
One of my favourite artists, Ralph Steadman is having an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in London to celebrate his 77th birthday. The Forbidden Planet blog has a good overview of what to expect.
They were right, so we are fixing it and, moreover, upping the ante by providing the best resale value guarantee in the automotive industry.
— Elon Musk
Tesla refines their finance markerting. Rather than digging their heels in, they’ve adjusted the prospective monthly payment value to include the buy back guarantee but exclude all the more contentious items included in the previous offering (avoiding the gas station, shortening your commute and the business tax, which are still available but opt-in).
Anton Repponen - What an amazing little site. The work honestly speaks for itself, but damn that’s a good portfolio he’s got going. Especially love the ‘About’ page.
Create Time - Nice article on the ‘creation’ of time and how you can do it as well. Cutting out on the smartphone and computer is actually pretty difficult for me, but the idea is for me to not touch those things until 8pm. After that I’m clear to do whatever I want. I get to eat and have some time with the wife.
Early in the morning I get another 30minutes of internet time. At work there is likely no way to do anything creative wise.
The Noun Project - Amazing resources for icons. The website is something beautiful and stark and simple and the work within is equally of the same quality.
Themes on Scriptogr.am - For my prosperity as I get to grips with what is an isn’t possible with Scriptogr.am. There are a couple of things that I won’t be able to have as I currently have on the original Broken Kode, but I guess that’s a small price to pay for the snappiness of creating and writing posts whereever and however I want. Fully Markdowned and ready to go.
Yanapax - In preparation for my online comic foray, this looks pretty interesting. Not sure if it works for my format, which is a series of panels that make a wide page, rather than something that looks more square.
The magic of Byword on the iPhone is pretty amazing. This little app is honestly the best of breed in the note taking world of iOS, and that’s saying something.
Easy referencing Dropbox images in Scriptogram - It’s amazing how quickly you can find solutions for problems you thought you had a few minutes ago. For my part, this practically solves all of my problems. It’s an additional ‘service’ that my website will need to operate properly, which isn’t the end of the world.
Publishing from Mou - This is very interesting, in that this hopefully opens the doors for publishing directly to Scriptogr.am from all kinds of apps. I’ve only recently found out about Mou, and now I might actually use it (if nothing else, just to publish to Scriptogr.am.
So tonight I spent a little bit of time playing around with Mou, and also exporting all of my posts and pages from my site that currently uses Habari as the CMS into a format that is compatible with Scriptogr.am.
To be completely honest Habari has actually done me proud for a good long while. The thing is I was never going to create something with that software
Completed the ‘A’s.
Without a doubt, Scriptogr.am is definitely the method that I would very much like to publish all of my words on the internet. The issue here is that I typically don’t like to be tied into a particular set of vendors that I don’t control. Having said that, as I come to the 9 years of running my main website, Broken Kode, I have found that I am writing less and less. Actually that’s not 100% true, I’m just publishing less and less.
Is that because my site isn’t the way I want it? Far from it. My website is EXACTLY the way I want it. Both in terms of colours, and links and content. The method might have something to do with it, in that I’m not excited by the software I’m using - but the software is a tool. The truth is that I’ve found that I want to discuss less on my website and focus more on actually creating work that I can be proud of.
However, if there is less and less resistance to the act of publishing, then maybe I would do more of it. After all, publishing and then editing as as simple as opening and file, typing away and then pressing ‘synchronise’ on a website.
There are many great things about Scriptogr.am, so I thought I’d discuss them so that I can remember why I will hopefully be moving my site over shortly.
The truth is there is a ton of great software out there that allows you to publish and for your voice to be heard. The problem of course is that due to the sheer number of websites out there, your voice is typically not heard as well as it used to, even though back then there was enough going on.
The question is then, do I want to move away from Dreamhost? I only need a domain registrar and that’s it really. I might then spend my cash on Dropbox instead and have that be my ‘hosting’. I use Dropbox every single day. While my website is something I use on occasion, and even then not very often.
There are things that are missing. Notably, search. However there are alternatives, I just haven’t really looked into them recently.
The other thing is formatting of a post dependant on a tag. So maybe styling ‘asides’ differently. This apparently can be done, I just need to work out how…
The software is still in Beta and I can tell that’s the case. I originally had a look around Scriptogram months ago. It’s matured nicely over that time. However there are some bugs. The bookmarklet doesn’t work as well as I would like it to. Publish doesn’t seem to work. It creates a new .md file in my Dropbox, but it doesn’t publish the actual post itself.
The transition to Scriptogr.am is going to take me some time. Thankfully I’ve got all of my posts as text files, it’s just going to take me some time to try and sort them out into this ‘new’ format. I’m in no real rush. I’ll continue to transition the site over here, one text file at a time until I’ve got everything setup the way I want it, and then it’ll just be a simple case of changing my DNS and that’s it done.
Tent.is - The irony of it all is that now that Twitter is integrated into iOS and OS X - I’m looking at alternatives…
I don’t typically link to myself, but this post by Brett Booth reminded me of something that I wrote years ago when something similar to the recent French cartoons were published, or that stupid movie was made. The Message was something I wrote in a different time, however my thoughts on the subject are mostly there.
Since reading it again, I’ve gone back and tweaked some of the typographical errors, but by and large it remains completely unedited.
Old City Blues - Cyberpunk graphic novel, done by a greek, set in ‘New Athens’. Obviously heavily inspired by the like of Akira and the works of Masamune Shirow, but it’s nice to see this sort of thing still getting made. It’s been a while since I got into some Cyberpunk.
Encore by Eric Canete - If you’re in the market for an expensive, but what looks like amazing art book, Encore seems to be the ticket. $150 (includes postage) to anywhere in the world. Only 58 books left as of this post.
Shit Apple Fanatics Say - Love these videos…because they’re true. Have found myself saying this shit to my wife on more than on occasion.
The 9 Warning Signs of an Amateur Artist - Embarrassingly, I found myself nodding to several of these. it’s a great list to review and hopefully rectify in some way.
When I moved over to the Mac, around 5 years ago now, I searched for an alternative to my go to text editor of choice, Notepad++. That search had obviously lead me (as it does many newbie mac users) to Bare Bone’s Textwrangler which appeared to be the defacto ‘ultimate free’ text editor of choice on the mac.
At the time, the problem was that I really couldn’t justify paying the full price of $100 for a text editor - no matter how powerful it was. As such I’ve never really used a single text editor that I called upon for all my text needs. In hindsight, maybe I should have invested.
Due to that decision, the amount of time I’d actually spent in a dedicated text editor however has been limited. I’d use the browser for most of my writing needs (this is before the iPhone and Simplenote) and most of my coding was done in Coda (I could justify paying $79 for a piece of software like Coda).
Obviously time moves on, and the Mac App Store has made it easier (and cheaper) to buy software (and keep it up to date). A couple of things happened. I stopped writing with any amount of consistency for my website, but the amount of writing personal notes, emails, reference files went up exponentially.
What brought this about, was my iPhone, Notational Velocity and Simplenote. I’ve written about Notational Velocity in a lot of detail before, but it remains an essential tool in my arsenal. Earlier last week, Simplenote experienced some syncing issues, and honestly it felt like part of me was not working properly. I depend upon the service a great deal and NV is at the centre of that.
So what has changed? NV is a simple application. That isn’t updated very often. In fact, as far as I can tell, it’s usually updated once a year (if that). As such new features are few and far inbetween. Also the type of features that are important to me might not actually be all that important or applicable to an application like Notational Velocity. NV is all about the speed. Without a doubt the single fastest application on my machine. Yes, application.
I thought I could get into the ‘minimalist’ text editors (iA Writer, Byword and the like) but ultimately those apps are limited as well. What’s triggered (and partly renewed) my interest in looking for a solution to all of my writing needs, is discussions that have been going on recently following Textmate’s open sourcing (yeah I looked into this as well, again couldn’t justify the cost and couldn’t see much of a future).
Textmate presents an interesting situation, in that Textmate 2 might grow to be an awesome open source text editor and might take over as the defacto free editor of choice on the mac, and what an incredible free editor that could be. The problem is that there is no timeline in such situations, and there are no guarantees what that future will be.
Which then brings us to BBEdit. BBEdit doesn’t do things in the most glamourous way. It lacks that ‘modern’ way of doing things, but I guess that is down to the fact that the app is over 20 years old - and so obviously has a few intrenched ideas. The thing that you definitely get with BBEdit is the fact that it’s rock solid. It’s got a pedigree that none of the text editors in the mac ecosystem even come close.
Therefore, after 5 years on the mac, I have finally decided to start using BBEdit for most of my writing needs. Notational Velocity remains an integral part of my arsenal and where all of my notes will be saved, but BBEdit will be where most of my writing will occur.
Evening Edition - Billing itself as ‘the perfect commute-sized way to catch up on the day’s news’. I’ve been thinking about how fantastic this little website actually is.
Branch and Medium - Good article on what these two new platforms are actually about.
A Drive into the Gap by Kevin Guilfoile - Honestly, probably one of the nicest ways to promote a book that I’ve seen in a long time. Extremely classy site, the video sets the tone and putting the first chapter for you to read there and then makes a lot of sense. Bought this book for my iPhone (haven’t gotten an iPad yet….don’t judge me, I’ve been busy).
GoSquared analyses the London 2012 Games - Absolutely incredible website. My favourite part is the 3D explosion of the main stadium.
Surface - by Microsoft. There is a lot to like about this, mainly the cover doubling up as a keyboard. It’s definitely the first time that I can think of I’ve actually wanted something to come to the iPad (even though I still don’t own one).
Oceania - The latest Smashing Pumpkins album is now available to download, buy or just listen to if you want. I’ve not had a chance to listen to the entire album, but the few songs that I have heard just blew me away. In many ways it transported me back to 1995, when I first bought Mellon Collie and the Infinite Saddness, and in other ways showed me what the band had done nearly 20 years after that time.
Cerebral Interviews attempts to capture the pop culture zeitgeist throughout the month. Published at the end of every month. 12 newsletters in 2012. No more, no less.
I was hoping to get more done for this edition, however I’m in the process of relocating countries, so this one is a bit of a short one.
If you’ve got any comments or want to share, you can contact me via twitter or by replying directly to this email. You can also continue the discussion of any of the points below on the dedicated Facebook page.
Finally, if you liked what you saw, why not forward this to others who might like it or send them to the signup page.
Thanks for reading,
Khaled Abou Alfa
April 2012
Figure by Propellerheads is easily one of the coolest looking apps you’ll find for the iPhone. You now have a drum machine in your pocket.
Fascinating work by Gabriel Moreno - damn you and your talented left hand.
The 2012 Eisner Awards nominations are out. The clear winners are Daredevil and Tale of Sand (which deserves the amount of attention it’s gotten). Craig Thomson’s Habibi got a couple of nods as well. However for those that didn’t get nominated but should have been, there is this list.
Great sneek peek into the DC Comics offices.
Robot 6 has a comprehensive (and the most exhaustive) preview of the upcoming Watchmen event. I am torn about this. I respect Alan Moore so much, but the talent involved is so great that I can’t help but want to see what’s going on. Part of me wishes that these same creators went and did something else. This wasn’t really necessary.
One of my favourite graphic designers (Rhian Hughes), redesigns on one my favourite comic company logos, Valiant. Such amazing early 90s summer memories from stories by that company. I will say that I love the old logo too much, but if ever there was a clever way to keep the old but update it.
Against all odd, Chelsea made it through past Barcelona into the final of the Champions League.
This keyboard from Logitech is probably the single greatest accessory for an iPad
One of the slickest and smartest wall clocks, now comes as a wrist watch (or will come soon).
Nico Rosberg wins his first grand prix, after 111 attempts. One of the best drivers to never have won a GP has now removed that monkey of his back.
Pixar finally creates a new property in Brave. The latest trailer looks fantastic, and recaptures that Pixar magic.
Smashing Pumpkin’s 7th studio album will be released this summer, Oceania.
Google Multitask video made me laugh (note the date it was posted).
Google Drive is finally a reality. Not that I care too much since I’m completely taken by Dropbox.
Brett has compiled a comprehensive table of all the available iOS text editors. I own most of these.
Google Glass was finally unveiled by Google X (the skunkworks section of Google). It’s an interesting concept, and it’s definitely pushing things in a completely different direction and as others have mentioned it’s fun to see Google throwing interesting stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Variant Covers for Before Watchmen - Can’t hide that I’m disappointed that these exist. I mean having this in the first place is bad enough, but rather than having a couple of pinups they’re doing variants just comes across as screwing a dead horse. Nice art though.
Last thing I write about ‘The Talk Show’, I promise. So Dan posted a clarification yesterday, which you can listen to here.
In it he explains that as widely predicted John was the one to make the move away from 5by5. That’s not a problem and Dan acknowledges that it wasn’t an issue. What’s probably the most surprising is not the fact that Gruber went somewhere else, but the fact that Gruber kept the name of the show without consulting Dan - that is definitely a dick move.
In my previous post, I speculated that part of the moral high ground was with Gruber on this one. However it’s clear that actually that’s only a small part. The part where he chose not to do the Talk Show with Dan anymore.
You want to go podcast somewhere else, that’s your right, but the manner in which this was done was ALL wrong. I’m not talking about disrespecting the audience as much as disrespecting your friend. The name should have been retired like Dan said. Like I’ve said before, it’s just a shame how things went down.
Ryan Woodward’s Bottom of the Ninth - an animated graphic novel, looks and feels absolutely incredible.
Yesterday I finally got a chance to listen to the latest episode of ‘The Talk Show’ with your host John Gruber - this being the first episode on Mule radio, without Dan Benjamin.
Overall I thought the episode was pretty good. There were a couple of rough patches in there, one that stood out was when John was reading the sponsors. You could tell he wasn’t comfortable doing it and came off pretty stilted. Another was where he repeated a story that’s been told before (I already know about John’s HBO cable card issues) - honestly these are minor quibbles.
The biggest worry for many, was whether or not John could keep the conversation flowing and take on the role that Dan had in the old show - that is being an effective show runner and getting things out of your ‘guest’. In this regard I thought John did a decent job, much better than I thought he could.
There is a single president for this type of dynamic, which was in episode 57, which had Merlin Mann filling in for Dan (during Dan’s paternity leave). At the time I definitely felt John’s enthusiasm levels higher, but I thought that was the Merlin Mann factor. As it turns out John can lift it up, if he wants to (or in this case needs to).
The truth of the matter is that I didn’t feel Dan’s presence missing, but that’s only because my brain hasn’t really processed the fact that Dan won’t be on the show again. In my mind, he’s just away for an episode and will be back soon - except we know that’s not going to happen.
I think it will feel a lot stranger in the coming episodes and it really does depend on whether John can keep this level of conversation up. Will he eventually settle on a single person to do the Talk Show with him? I would imagine that would be the case….which leads me to my next point.
###Rotating Guest Gruber held his own and John Moltz was actually a very good guest. Wouldn’t mind hearing his thoughts on a more regular basis to be honest. Having Moltz in there changed the dynamics of the show because there were different angles to tackle on familiar topics.
The question I have is how many other similar types of guests can John have - before he runs out of interesting cats to talk to? Dan did something similar with the Pipeline show but then stopped it. Can he do a Zeldman and basically run the show whenever he’s got interesting guests or will he look for a permanent replacement?
All interesting questions to see how they pan out in practice, because clearly he’s not going to say how he intends to do this - not really his style.
Saturday morning, listeners of John Gruber and Dan Benjamin’s ‘The Talk Show’ podcast were greeted with a new episode, this time without Dan and on another network that wasn’t Dan’s either - the show had moved to Mule Radio.
This took everyone by surprise in that neither host had said anything was wrong up until that point - or that this was going to happen. It all happened pretty quickly as well, within the span of a week.
The really weird thing about all of this is that neither host has really discussed this in much detail - anywhere. Not on their respective sites (Daring Fireball, Big Week, Hivelogic, 5by5 Blog) or on their twitter accounts (@gruber and @danbenjamin).
Clearly Gruber was more prepared for this since he had to sort things out with his new network (Mule Radio), record a new podcast, decide how he was going to present it to the world (a single post on his website) and how he was going to respond to the fall out (ignore it). Which leads me to believe that it was clearly John who instigated this move.
The silence from Dan is completely uncharacteristic and I feel part of it is that first of all he’s a bit stunned by it and doesn’t want to say anything…yet. Eventually I think he’ll need to say something, he runs a podcasting network, that streams it’s content live. It’s only a matter of time.
###Reasons Obviously there has been a lot of interest, you can find a review of the situation (complete with relevant tweets) and potential reasons for the split.
I highly doubt this is a personal thing, because they’ve been doing this for many years (in various incarnations), so I doubt that John woke up one morning and realised he can’t stand Dan’s voice or demeanour.
There has been lots of speculation that this is down to money. Ultimately it’s about money, but I think that’s only part of the truth. I think more importantly is that I believe this all stems from Gruber not agreeing with a particular business decision by Dan. There’s a moral ground here and it appears to me that Gruber maybe on the higher level.
The reason I’m being specific is because John has left the network, none of the other hosts have left, so it has to be something between the two only.
###Why do I think that? Gruber isn’t a poor guy. He’s not going to be throwing away a friendship over a few 1000 dollars. He’s making $7500 per week just on the sponsorship advertising from his site. He’s going throw away a good thing for what $5000 from some t-shirts - or a slice of an app that is no Angry Birds or Tiny Wings?
Gruber would need to be reasonably upset to decide enough is enough. You only do that when you feel like you’ve been unfairly treated - and there was nothing the other party could do to make it right. Now here’s the other part. Gruber kept ‘The Talk Show’ name. He took that with him. He presented the old artwork before it was updated and used on the 5by5 network.
I’m not sure if that was written in the contract between Gruber and Dan, that the name is copyrighted to Gruber (since he came up with it?) or if Dan felt that he could/should give that name up since the issue stemmed from his part.
###What’s was the straw that broke the camel’s back? That’s the main question here. That’s the one everyone is curious to find out about. What did Dan do that was so outrageous to Gruber and not to any of the other hosts on 5by5? The answer could be something that every host would presumably have, a contract.
I would imagine that there be a standard contract for all 5by5 hosts - which includes terms about the use of the artwork, the name, money paid out etc. I think something happened during the negotiations in renewing Gruber’s contract. 28th July 2010, nearly two years ago is when the talk show started it’s new lease on life. Maybe the original contract was only for 2 years. Maybe there was a breakdown when negotiations began to renew the contract.
Those that hate Gruber might say that he was getting greedy and Dan wasn’t playing ball. That’s is entirely plausible. Another view might be that Gruber felt insulted by what was being proposed. That when the original contract was negotiated, 5by5 was a much smaller business. The landscape is different, in no small part due to ‘The Talk Show’.
To anyone who says “Eh, he only had to turn up and speak”, is missing the point. When’s the last time those people recorded 120 episodes of a podcast (including the old show)? It takes time and it takes commitment.
###Why do I care I kept asking myself the same question. Why do I even care. I care because the show wasn’t the John Gruber show, it was the Dan and John show. It was a show that I would listen to, even if I didn’t listen to another podcast that entire week. I listened to them on my long commutes and on a Saturday morning while making breakfast.
All good things come to an end - I’m not saying that they should do it indefinitely. What I would have felt appropriate is if the show was given a proper send off. The show deserved better and the audience deserved better.
Update 1: I thought I’d add this in because maybe the post above seems to defend Gruber at the expense of Dan. That wasn’t what this post was trying to achieve. I’ve been reading a lot of comments and posts from various people, and it appeared to me as though there was a point of view that wasn’t covered.
I wanted to present the point of view that John and Dan would have to negotiate terms for them to continue working together - typically captured in a contract. Without that contract there’s no way in knowing what those terms were/are. This post never claimed to know those terms. The reason for their breakup didn’t have to be some scheme by Gruber to get a piece of 5by5 or whatever. The reasons could be (and probably are) more complicated. The most important point about all of this is that contracts are negotiated every day. I had to do the same thing, every one does it in one form or another. People make decisions based on what they feel is right for them. The post never made up reasons.
How am I affected? Just like the thousands of other ‘Talk Show’ listeners, I won’t be able to listen to one of my favourite podcasts (and possibly the longest one I’ve been subscribed to).
So over the years Facebook and Twitter have taken blog’s breakfast, lunch and dinner. People typically blog less, or write less on their own websites. I’ve not really had this issue here on the ‘Kode since I don’t use Twitter and Facebook all that much myself.
One of the things that I used to do is actually post more smaller links. Nowadays I’ve been collecting these for my newsletter. There’s something concise about 12 sets of links at the end of the year that collect what was going on during that month. Easier to scan through.
So over the weekend, we moved into our new house in Doha. This was the place we carefully selected after viewing at least 20 properties (and phoning countless more) in a reasonably short period of time.
The furniture is from ‘The One’ which is nice
html5 + grooveshark - I’m not sure when the new HTML5 beta version of Grooveshark went live, but you can now create paylists as well. They’ve also created a nice little icon to use for iOS users as well (which is awesome).
It’s been nearly a month since we moved to Qatar, so I think I should finally start talking about the place that we’re calling home for the foreseeable future.
Although I don’t want to really start off my post with something bad, I thought I’d get this out of the way so that I can concentrate on the good stuff. Basically the biggest part so far that has affected me is the weather.
We got married one year ago today. My parents were stressing out about it, and made sure to tell me about it as well. How it was such a terrible idea to have an outdoor wedding on the first week of May, in Lebanon. We should have pushed it back, at least 1 week if not 2. There were many clouds in the sky in the week leading up to wedding. The night before it really looked like the heavens were going to open up. It rained very early the morning of that day, and then it stopped to present this amazing sunny day.
Seeing my bedridden grandmother and other sickly family members make superhuman effort to come to the wedding was a gesture that I couldn’t help but marvel at. Having my friends and other family members travel from all over the world to come and visit was another aspect of this wedding that I will forever remember and cherish.
My wife was radiant (as all good brides should be), and the smile and happiness on her face was bright as ever. The food I’m told was pretty good as well, although we didn’t get to sample much of it to be honest as we were far to busy with everyone else.
Everything else was a blur. It went by far too quickly. It ended far too quickly for me. Months spent preparing for this day, gone in a matter of hours. Ultimately it was a good way to start off our marriage.
The first year of marriage has been both exciting and hard. The highlight for us was going to Malaysia for our honeymoon. A trip that Yasmine still talks about (and even calls Qatari Riyals as Ringits, because it sounds better). We were unlucky in our choice of first house, which was a construction mess - which triggered off Yasmine’s asthma, something she still has problems with. We ended up moving houses 6 months into our contract. Then I got made redundant. Because of this fact, we ended up moving houses again 6 months later, this time to a different country entirely.
It’s not been a calm year that’s for sure. Turbulent is one way of describing it. Thankfully life in Qatar is simpler. Quieter. That’s something we’re relishing at the moment. We feel much better for it. We feel like this should have been the start we wanted a year ago. We’re moving into our new house this weekend, so hopefully we’ll be there for more than 6 months.
Life with throw things your way, that’s a given, lefts hope that in the future the amount and frequency will be less than what it was in our first year.
Happy Anniversary.
Cerebral Interviews newsletter page has been created. When I decided to have a little ‘cover’ for each newsletter, I always wanted to have them all shown in one single page, for easy access in the future. This is that page. Eventually I’ll have a yearly pdf archive for people to download at the end of the year, but that’s 8 more newsletters away.
A rare insight into Kowloon Walled City - As a building services engineer, and someone who is actively involved in building the future, these pictures completely blew my mind. This place was wrong on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin. Thank god it got pulled down.
“300 interconnected high-rise buildings, all constructed without contributions from a single architect.”
When I first got into American superhero comics in the early 90s, the two companies that completely captured my imagination were Image and Valiant Comics. What made things even more exciting for me was that these two universes had just had an inter company crossover, with the likes of Jim Lee, Joe Quesada, Mark Silvestri, Bob Layton all contributing. For me it was and still is a magical time in my comic book reading history, painted with nostalgia and a simpler time.
Nearly 20 years on, and things in the comic book landscape have changed. Jim Lee sold his company to DC Comics and now is Publisher at the company. Joe Quesada went on to become the EIC of Marvel and then Chief Creative Officer at Marvel. Valiant disappeared from the comic publishing scene, unable to really use the properties that they had at their disposal. A connected universe that resembled Marvel in ways that no other comic publishing company had achieved since - mainly thanks to the founder, Jim Shooter. If you’ve not understood yet, I’m a huge fan of that period in comics.
Valiant was bought by Acclaim comics and that was their second coming. They tried to revitalise the universe, with new creators and new directions. Ultimately it wasn’t good enough and sales faltered, with the company shutting it’s doors.
The third coming of Valiant comics came under the direction of Fabian Nicieza, but wasn’t really all that memorable.
The fourth coming of Valiant comics was revealed this week, with the release of X-O Manowar #1 - and I think that they finally have the right direction to build something that might last. What makes this attempt different you ask?
The first and foremost aspect of all of this is the fact that they’ve combined some exceptional high level talent for their books. Not only that, they’ve secured Cary Nord onto an exclusive contract, which hopefully means 12 solid issues of X-O manowar, their flagship title having a consistent creative team.
The books they’ve chosen to release have also been considered. The cover to Bloodshot #1 is arguably one of my favourite comic book covers of the year so far.
The most telling part of this new vision, is the logo. They went direct to the top and best creative talent in Rhian Hughes to update their logo. The original compass dial is iconic (at least in my eyes). Hughes cleverly kept that motif but updated it to include the Valiant ‘V’ in there. It feels modern but at the same time reminds you of the past very clearly. Something he has done with the rest of the trade dress for these books.
The biggest loss in my eyes is the fact that they don’t have the Gold Key characters in the fold as well. The presence of Solar, Magnus and Turok in the Valiant Universe feels natural and so the loss of these characters is definitely one I will miss moving forward. Having said that they still have a huge library of characters from which to choose from, the likes of Ninjak, Dr.Mirage and Rai all come to mind.
And of course it would be great if they could get Jim Shooter to write a graphic novel for them…but somehow I doubt that will ever happen.
The April edition of my Cerebral Interviews newsletter is out. If you want to read that, then go subscribe and I’ll send it through to you.
I reproduce these here on the site, 1 month after they were originally sent, so here is the March edition.
#Cerebral Interviews Issue 03 - Vol 01 - Mar 2012 ##A Word In Your Ear Cerebral Interviews attempts to capture the pop culture zeitgeist throughout the month. Published at the end of every month. 12 newsletters in 2012. No more, no less.
I was hoping to get more done for this edition, however I’m in the process of relocating countries, so this one is a bit of a short one.
If you’ve got any comments or want to share, you can contact me via twitter or by replying directly to this email. You can also continue the discussion of any of the points below on the dedicated Facebook page. Finally, if you liked what you saw, why not forward this to others who might like it or send them to the signup page. Thanks for reading, Khaled Abou Alfa March 2012 www.brokenkode.com
###App of the Month Sparrow for iOS. Sparrow on the mac redefined how I interact with my email. Sparrow for iOS doesn’t do that for my iPhone, but it comes damn near close.
###Apple 25 Billion Downloads from the App Store. Here are the top 25 lists for both the iPhone and the iPad.
Apple announces the 3rd Generation iPad. Complete with LTE, Retina display and the same battery life as before.
Mike Daisey is a liar. Listen to the retraction on This American Life.
###Architecture Western Concourse Lounge at Kings Cross opens in London, and it’s stunning.
Enzo Ferrari Museum has finally opened in Modena, Italy. The original design was done by the late Czech architect and Future Systems founder Jan Kaplický.
On a personal note, this is the project that I am relocating to Qatar to work on the Qatar National Museum. Yes it’s insane, but the good kind.
###Book of the Month It’s hard to tell when this book was officially released, but I was only recently able to get a copy of Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand. The official page also has links to all the reviews but I’ve not found any that actually discuss what the book actually means or is trying to say (even in a round about way).
###Crowd Funding Albatros bookmark is an incredibly clever little idea. It’s already reached it’s required goal, but if you’ve ever wished a bookmark was clever enough to remember which page you’re on, this is it.
###Comics Dinosaurs vs Aliens usually I’d move straight on after hearing that title, but attach Grant Morrison’s name to it and you’ve got my interest.
One of the greatest artists Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) dies. Kim Thompson has written an amazing obituary. Robot 6 presents 6 essential books to get into the work created. Gavin has an amazing collection of images in tribute to the master, along with a series of videos. And finally the Forbidden Planet blog also has a collection of art to reflect on a master that has left us.
After over 10 years of legal battles, it appears that Neil Gaiman and Todd Mcfarlane have reached an agreement - maybe. The full history of this battle can be found here.
###Contemporary Art Takashi Murakami’s Ego exhibition in Doha has been open for a couple of months now. Here’s a series of photos from the exhibition.
###Football Lionel Messi scores his 234th goal for Barcelona, which is more insane, considering he’s still only 24 years old.
###Movies The Prometheus trailer was released, to every sci-fi fan’s delight.
Cerebral Interviews copyright © 2012 Khaled Abou Alfa
The March edition of my Cerebral Interviews newsletter is out. If you want to read that, then go subscribe and I’ll send it through to you.
I reproduce these here on the site, 1 month after they were originally sent, so here is the February edition.
#Cerebral Interviews Issue 02 - Vol 01 - Feb 2012 ##A Word In Your Ear Cerebral Interviews attempts to capture the pop culture zeitgeist throughout the month. Published at the end of every month. 12 newsletters in 2012. No more, no less. If you’ve got any comments or want to share, you can contact me via twitter or by replying directly to this email. You can also continue the discussion of any of the points below on the dedicated Facebook page. Finally, if you liked what you saw, why not forward this to others who might like it or send them to the signup page. Thanks for reading, Khaled Abou Alfa February 2012 www.brokenkode.com
Ferrari unveiled their latest challenger, and it is definitely one of the ugliest looking cars that the team has ever created.
Lotus F1 showed off their latest creation, the E20, with a nice video walkaround the factory with interviews.
Sauber released some photos online. Red Bull released some computer images - they really shouldn’t have even bothered.
The rest of the teams that have completed their cars (Williams F1, Mercedes, Toro Rosso, Force India ) chose to showcase their cars in the garage before the first test which was held in Valencia, Spain. ###Geek Culture For all you Lego and Back to the Future fans, these sets are nirvana. And while we’re on the subject of lego, these Star Wars sets are also pretty amazing.
Kevin Smith debuted his new show ‘Comic Book Men’ on AMC (from the people that give us Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead). Here’s a Q&A with Smith about the show. ###Gadgets Sometimes the simplest ideas are also the most intriguing. The Sonastand fits that bill in my mind perfectly. Part acoustic aid, part stand, this thing looks great.
While we’re on the subject of iPhone accessories, this review should help you make up your mind if you’re in the market for enhancing your iPhone photography with lens clips.
###Life
Many things we do in life now don’t follow what was considered normal and acceptable several 100 years ago. Including your sleep of 8 hours at once. It wasn’t always like this you know. There was a first and second sleep…
###Movies
As a precursor to that major award ceremony in the States, ‘The Artist’ cleared house and won 6 BAFTA awards.
At the Oscars, the major awards went to ‘The Artist’, which won in the categories for Music (Original Score), Costume Design, Best Picture, Actor in Leading Role and Directing. Hugo (which is a great movie that focuses on the beginnings of cinema in Paris) walked off with 5 oscars in the more technical categories. The surprise for me was Rango which won at both awards for Best Animated feature. Maybe because I was tired, maybe because it was late but I slept through this movie at the cinema.
Also, Angelina’s leg got a lot of column space and some spoofs. ###Music Another music icon, Whitney Houston has died, hours before the Grammy Awards.
This latest music video from OK Go brought back memories of actually being excited and enjoying music videos. ###Software Apple releases the developer preview to their next iteration of their computer operating system, OS X Mountain Lion - notice they’ve dropped the Mac from there. ###Technology Raspberry PI is an awesome initiative from the UK. Buy a rudimental computer for either $25 or $35. The bad news is that they sold out on their first day. The good news is that they’re ramping up production. ###Websites After over 2 years, I finally redesigned my site. You can read about it here, and you can see previous versions of the site here. As with most of these things, it’s still a work in progress that I get into in bursts of productivity, fix a bunch of bugs and clean things up a bit. ###Writing Fountain is a plain text markup language for screenwriting. If you’re a Markdown user (this newsletter was written in Markdown) and you happen to also write Screenplays or even comics, this has got your name all over it and I’m surprised it took this long to create.
Cerebral Interviews copyright © 2012 Khaled Abou Alfa
I’m in Doha. This is the second time that I visit Qatar in the last year. 9 months ago Yasmine and I passed through Doha on our way to Malaysia for our honeymoon. Ok, so the first time wasn’t really a visit, but still, we spent a few hours looking around the airport.
That was during the summer and so I remember the insane heat that greeted us. This time the weather is better, except I’ve not really had a chance to see the city as I’ve been on site all days working on this project, the Qatar National Museum.
Also since arriving we’ve there’s been a pretty thick sandstorm which has hit the GCC states and I can’t see across the bay.
Trying to find the right opportunity to make things work is also something that I feel was a rough ride but I think this could be it. The work is incredibly interesting and I genuinely enjoyed sitting down with the various specialists last week in London to get the nitty gritty details of the plethora of services that I’ll be discussing in the coming weeks and months.
Through it all my wife has been supportive even though our patience with everything has been tested, my family have been a great help as well and obviously my friends have really been there for me as well.
Once I get a good look at the city, I’ll start posting pictures.
Imagine with Lego - Absolutely brilliant series of adverts for Lego, my ultimate and favourite toy of all time.
Jean Giraud, one of the greatest masters, has died. I’m still not sure I’ve taken the news in to be honest, because I seriously felt like the man was still untouchable. I remember a few years ago watching a youtube video of him drawing on a Cinteq and getting more depressed at just how incredible this 70 year old was. The man was a genuine master and a term that I reserve and use only ever so sparingly, but a true genius. Any description I come up with won’t be able to do justice to the man’s works, but this post captures some of that magic, while this post captures some of things that I feel.
Apple goes back to the future with logo revamp - I hadn’t realised that Apple updated it’s logo. It’s interesting, but it reminds me a little bit of the spinning rainbow wheel which unfortunately presents a negative connotation in my mind.
Frames - from the chaps at Studio Neat, is a Time-Lapse and Stop Motion Movies maker, on your iPhone. I do love the advert.
Fran by Jim Woodring - Jim is one of my comic book heroes. I only really got into his work several years ago, but I’ve honestly not looked back. Weird and wonderful and now in need of your help. If you’re a fan, consider helping the man out.
Continuing on from my series on Cognisant Design, this fourth article in the series, I’m going to concentrate a bit on pens.
I’m a bit of a stationary nut and have been for most of my life. For some reason ever since I was a little boy I remember my friends and I finding and creating elaborate boxes and containers for our pens; this was always considered one of the coolest ways to spend a weekend, and then show off on Monday. We all tried our best to outdo each other at school.
I think my love for pens might have started off with a gift by my father (when I was really young), which was this thin silver ballpoint Cross pen. At the time I thought the pen was the greatest thing in the world. To be fair, it’s a design classic. The only thing about the pen that never sat well with me was that it was a ballpoint pen. The ink in a ballpoint pen doesn’t flow as nicely and the lines are not as precise as I would like them to be. I’ve looked at their website now and there is something of an alternative, clearly they can’t make the smaller swivel pens with the rollerball ink in there - and even then I don’t know how good the ink will actually be.
Over the years I tried using fountain pens, but the fact that they ran out of ink constantly, were messy and ultimately I really didn’t like what was left on the page, it looked faded, I kept looking elsewhere. My hunt eventually led me to the greatest invention as far as writing equipment is concerned, gel ink.
###Muji For the last few (at least 8) years I’ve been a very staunch supporter of the Muji gel ink pens. Although these come in a range of colours, I’m a black ink man. Blue ink doesn’t do it for me. On my recent trip to London, I found that Muji had upgraded this line of pens, so that you can now buy the ink refills for a reasonable price - they also come in packs of 10 as well. God I love the Japanese.
As an aside, although I’m a Moleskin man through and through, I couldn’t help myself and picked up one of these threadbound notebooks. This has been a bit of a revelation. For smaller projects these are the ideal size to have one for each. They come with 72 pages and the binding is strong, while the pages are just the correct thickness and smoothness.
###Pilot While on honeymoon in Malaysia I was reading a copy of Icon and in it there was mention of the Pilot G-TEC C4. We were in this amazing bookstore, and I noticed these there and decided to buy 10. These have provide a very precise line and are great for sketching technical drawings. Some might say their line is a bit too precise, but they are very technical pens.
After looking on the Pilot website, one of the things that I would like to try is the Frixion Ball Slim pen - hey it’s got the word slim in it’s name.
###Zebra Another gel ink pen that I am enjoying at the moment for it’s thicker lines is the Zebra Sarasa Clip, at 0.5. I want to use the the 0.4 size. The surprising thing about these pens is the quality of the black ink, which is much richer than any of the pens that I have ever used. They can be a bit messy because they leave residues of ink which can be prone to smudging. As such I’ve not completely fallen in love with this pen.
###Suppliers I’d be remiss not to discuss your suppliers throughout all of this. One of the websites that kept coming up throughout my searches is Jet Pens. What a fantastic resource for pen geeks like myself. The other website to definitely check out is Cool Pencil Case. Unfortunately for me, the case that would I really, really, really want has been sold out. I’m going to see if my wife would be willing to try and make this for me, for one thing I can’t sow myself out of a paper bag (whatever that means).
The second issue of my monthly newsletter ‘Cerebral Interviews’ is out. If you want it, just subscribe here. I’ll send it off to all the new subscribers. If you want to know what to expect from the newsletter, here’s the content from the first newsletter for you to see.
For the last 3 weeks solid I have been working with my cousin on our new venture. It probably see the light of day for many many moons, but I just wanted to send a massive shout out and thank you to PJ over at www.somerandomdude.com. This guy has created the single most useful and beautiful icon set ever. I’ve used several in my time, but Iconic is here to stay.
iPhone UI Vector Elements - If you’re creating an iOS application, this little download is an absolute essential. Shame not many people have linked to this resource.
Start Developing iOS Apps Introduction - While I may currently be unemployed….my god that’s even more painful to write than to say, I am working hard on my pet project that started in the summer of 2011. An iOS app. This week has been immense in the development of our first app, so it’s kind of pertinent for Apple to release this excellent guide to starting App development. If you’re looking to do something similar, now might be the chance to start.
Faveous - The place for everything you like…apparently. Yet another place to collect everything for you.
Learn HTML & CSS - Doubt I need this book, as I typically buy coding books to not really get past the first couple of chapters, but this looks stunning.
Sparrow for iPhone - Is coming soon. Click on the link for some screenshots. Sparrow has made me love sending emails from my mac again. I don’t do it as often as I would like, but the process is much more enjoyable using sparrow, especially for multiple accounts.
Table-Taffy-Studios - The art of Sean Galloway and Ryan Benjamin. Also you can check out Sean Galloway’s Bastions 7 webcomic (in progress I guess). He’s bought in one of my favourite writers in J.Torres, so I’m all over this.
The Manual - Speaking of stunning books on web design and coding, this series of books looks incredible. If I was living in a country where I could buy shit off the internet, I’d have bought this instantly. Sadly I live n Lebanon where buying stuff and receiving stuff are two mutually exclusive things.
Das Keyboard For Mac - I have to say I’m jealous of Merlin Mann and John Gruber’s clickity clackity keyboards. It’s like when someone eats a burger on TV and you have this amazing craving for a burger…same sort of thing. This Das keyboard is the closest I’ll get, but I honestly don’t know if I can cheat on my aluminium Apple keyboard, which honestly is a thing of beauty.
A Visual History of Daft Punk Helmets - I’m on a bit of a helmet hunt at the moment (it’ll become clear why in due course).
Falling Skies - Ever since BSG finished years ago, I’ve not gotten into a new Sci-fi series. I guess between BSG and Babylon 5, something special has to come along. I’ve not heard anyone talk about this series but definitely interested in seeing a few episodes.
Iron Sky - Honestly I don’t know whether this is going to be great fun or complete rubbish. But I’ve got to give it to them, space Nazi’s is something I’ve still not seen used in popular culture.
Red Bull Stratos - Came looking for inspiration of the helmet design, stayed for the insane idea. The thing that I honestly don’t know is who the hell drinks Red Bull? Who do you know drinks that stuff, except university students with their vodka. Either way, they keep sponsoring these projects and activities (including their Formula One operation) and I’m cool with that.
Fountain - What makes this is extremely interesting to me is that I imagine that this markup language can also be used (within reasons) for writing comic scripts. I’ll need to play around with it a bit more but definitely something to consider as well.
Yesterday I spent an incredible amount of my time sorting out my bookmarks. I know this sounds incredibly dull and time consuming, but the idea is spend the time now, save time later.
I never got into Delicious but I did attempt to play around with it and Magnolia at the time. The thing is it all felt a bit overkill for me and the social aspects got in the way. The latest king of the bookmarking application is Pinboard.in and as I discovered yesterday, with good reason. It’s proclaimed as antisocial bookmarking, which is a perfect description. It’s about your bookmarks, organised.
###The Hurdle There are a couple of hurdles to get past though before you can get to bookmark nirvana. You have to import your bookmarks and then organise them within Pinboard. The way it’s done in Pinboard is through tags. There are no folders. That’s the first and, as far as I’m concerned, only rub. Pinboard tries hard to make it easier to edit and organise your bookmarks, but when you’re dealing with hundreds of bookmarks, it’s going to take the time it takes to go through them and tag them properly.
###Features Features that I appreciate having include the private bookmarks, the general smart import features (which allow you to import from any modern browser or from your twitter account as well). The final feature that I’m thankful for, isn’t so much a feature, but the lack of additional bells and whistles to try and distinguish itself. There is very limited social interation (which is great). The web interface is all about the text, doesn’t slow down the loading process with thumbnails, you can have as much information or little as you want (show or hide the actual url path) and the colours of the various information is clear and distinct.
###Impact The biggest impact for me however is that I’ve finally found a solution to my bookmarks. For years they have been scattered across several browsers, and honestly I’d never go back to them, as I would never know what was going on. Pinboard is an incredibly tempting solution which will reduce the barrier of find what I’m looking for, or at least remember something that I had originally found in the past.
I can now be found here if you want to know what I’ve been linking to.
Mike Dutton - That talented bastard. People like him make me depressed and then determined to go and draw. Here’s his official website.
New OK Go Music Video - The kings of the music video (at least in the 2000s) have released their latest masterpiece. This one features over 1,000 musical instruments hit by a moving vehicle.
Pears - This is an interesting resource by Dan Cederholm of Simplebits. As always with Dan’s designs, you can tell he created it, distinct styling.
LongReply - Is a service that lets you reply in a longer form to tweets. The interesting part for me is the fact that it’s brought to us by MailChimp labs - although it’s not highlighted on their page. I just find it interesting what an active company MailChimp actually is, even though I don’t very much care about the name or branding (yeah I know the character was designed by Jon Hicks, but it’s no Firefox logo).
Paper.li - Interesting service, which effectively allows you to compile your own ‘newspaper’. I guess it’s similar to Flipboard and Zite but then allow others to see your vision. Yet another way to curate the web for others .
The Amazing Spider-man Trailer - Latest trailer for this movie, which surprisingly is looking pretty awesome. I’m still not convinced by the Spidey suit, but the feel of the movie has me excited.
I’ve actually attempted to redesign this site several times in the past few years, but I always said that I would only do that if it was an improvement over what I had. Finally after 2 and a half years I believe I have that design.
This version has been in the making for the better part of 6 months now. It is without a doubt one of the simplest designs I’ve ever done. So much so that the whole thing only has a single image (the logo image). The design is definitely an evolution rather than a revolution. The general minimal aesthetics remain, the typography has changed only slightly (although the horizontal spacing has been rigidly adheard to).
In an attempt to bring the links that I had hidden behind a ‘shelf’ has been brought forward to highlight other areas of the site as well.
###HTML5 and CSS3 In this design, one of the things that I decided to do was transition to HTML5. This wasn’t as hard as I originally thought it would be, and would highly recommend the following resources as the ones that I kept going back to again and again.
I have not used any CSS3, but I think that’s something that I will eventually try as well. I’ve learnt over the years that a personal site is never complete and takes time to mature.
One thing that’s definitely going to be a new constant into my workflow is Joen’s Vanilla. Even if I didn’t do anything, this little bit of CSS gives me all the structure I need to make things look good.
###Responsive Design Another aspect that clearly came up, was that when designing a modern website, you are no longer designing one website anymore, you really should be designing a minimum of two. One for the large screen and one for the smaller screen. Each have different functions in a way, as if you put to much in one side, you end up limiting the other. It’s a balancing act that comes through in the design.
I’m not sure if I’ve achieved that balance correctly at the moment, but it’s something that I found very interesting. I was constantly working with a wider implementation of the site next to a narrow implementation. I found that actually there is a distinct difference between the minimum size that you can take your Safari browser to comparted to that shown on the iPhone. I have a lot of work to be carried out here still, but this is a start.
###Logo The logo has changed as well. It’s been stripped down and completely simplified, and in fact harkens back to the very first logo that I created for the site, back in 2004. I will be using the ‘X’ in a variety of ways over the next few years (as shown in my Cerebral Interviews newsletter, subscribe now if you haven’t).
###Colour Shades of blue have always played an important part in every Broken Kode design. This design brought back one of my favourite colours, turqoise. The dark aspect has been slightly tonned down a bit. While I’ve always loved the richness of the dark navy blue that adorned this site for the previous version, I always felt that you had to have a really nice screen to full appreciate it. This colour palette will seems faded out in comparison, but still provides a serious outlook.
###Typography and Fonts I didn’t change the font or the size from the previous design. I feel that if it isn’t broken which change it? Yes it doesn’t follow the trend of larger text, but to be honest, that’s not a big deal for me. There’s something consice by using an 11pt verdana font. The font that you use for a text heavy (mainly?) site, is profound of course. With the advent of Typekit and others, I could literally have my pick of just about any font that I could want.
Speed for me is important, but I’ve found that verdana serves the purpose very well. I might change if I find something suitable in the future, but it’s one of those things that I’d like to discover by happy accident rather than hunt for in a redesign.
###Future Evolution Hopefully this design will be tweaked slightly over the coming years, but hopefully I’ll keep refining it rather than redesigning it, much in the same way I did with the previous version. However I honestly feel that baring quiting blogging completely, I’ll keep this design for a good long while.
Nooka - Never heard of or seen these watches before (and I remain a real traditionalist when it comes to my timepieces) but the way they present time is if anything interesting and now you can check it out with their new iPhone app.
Reflections at Keppel Bay - by Daniel Libeskind. Possibly one of the first completed works by the architectural practice that I find kind of mesmerising. There’s something beautiful about them.
Ferrari F2012 - Typically (and I hate to admit it) Ferrari usually make pretty Formula one single seaters…this year’s thing is an absolute abomination.
The first issue of Cerebral Interviews is out. All those that subscribed, please check your spam folders just in case you got a confirmation email, or the email itself in there. For this first issue, I’m going to be posting it around the same time. In the future, this will only be posted onto the site 1 month after the newsletter.
So if you’re looking to get your fix early, go subscribe.
##Cerebral Interviews
Issue 01 - Vol 01 - Jan 2012
###A Word In Your Ear
Cerebral Interviews attempts to capture the pop culture zeitgeist throughout the month. Published at the end of every month. 12 newsletters in 2012. No more, no less.
If you’ve got any comments or want to share, you can contact me via twitter or by replying directly to this email. You can also continue the discussion of any of the points below on the dedicated Facebook page.
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Thanks for reading,
Khaled Abou Alfa
January 2012
www.brokenkode.com
###The Year of the Dragon
Chinese new years was celebrated on the 23rd of January, which began the year of the dragon. As there are 12 animals to cycle through, this event comes along once every 12 years. So go celebrate…by making some dragon babies.
###App of the Month
Reading Trainer is an app which improves your reading speed and information retention. The more you use it the better you become.
###Architecture
This museum by Daniel Libeskind caught my eye, although probably not for all the right reasons.
###Animation
DC Nation Aardman short indent for the Cartoon Network block of cartoons based on DC Comics characters - cute.
###Books
The Someday Funnies is finally in print (even says so on the cover as well). This is the long-awaited collection of comic strips created in the early 1970s by world-famous artists and writers such as C. C. Beck, René Goscinny, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby, Moebius, Art Spiegelman, and Gahan Wilson.
###Comics
DC Comics has updated their logo, with a definite departure from their previous mark. While the long standing DC Bullet logo was replaced with a refresh in 2005, this update is very different. The original leaked designs didn’t show how this logo would ultimately be used, however once the official designs were presented, the reviews have been mostly positive. Finally, one of my design heroes, Rhian Hughes weighs in on the redesign as well.
Maybe not as high profile, and with a nod to their previous logo, indie comics publisher Oni Press has also updated their logo. Here’s a poster treatment that I thought was very bold and strong.
###Design
How do you follow up leading the Apple stores that are now scattered across the world? You become the CEO of JCPenny’s of course. At least that’s the route that former Apple SVP Ron Johnson took. He’s been at the helm for 3 months now, and the fruits of his labour are now starting to appear. This advert is seen by many as Ron’s ‘Think Different’ campaign. Here’s an interview with Ron. And then there’s that new logo.
###Football
Thierry Henry returns to Arsenal, and scores in his opening match. Not so sure about that beard.
###Formula One
Speaking of comebacks, we got to see Kimi Räikkönen back in a Formula 1 car. Will his comeback be as lukewarm as Michael Schumacher’s? At least he didn’t grow a beard.
The Caterham F1 team were the first to reveal what the new 2012 spec Formula 1 cars might look like (more photos here, and here). Here’s an interview with Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne and team owner Tony Fernandes.
###Gadgets
This iPad stand caught my eye as something Apple would (or even should) have created.
###Movies
Tintin won ‘Best Animated Feature Film’ at the Golden Globe awards…and Spielberg forgot to thank Hergé …twat.
The Oscar 2012 nominations are in. As expected ‘The Artist’ got a ton of nominations (scoring 10 nominations), but surprisingly, so did ‘Hugo’ (claiming 11 nominations). Hugo is directed by Martin Scorsese.
###Software
Apple has released their iBook creation tool, iBooks Author. Here is a run down of the various features that you should be aware of, but beware of the Apple EULA (End User License Agreement) and make sure you understand what you’re signing up for. If you’re happy to jump in but wondering what to write about, here’s a list of ideas for you to consider.
###Tech
Kodak files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. and has set up a website detailing it’s future course. For more on what Chapter 11 Bankruptcy means, obviously head on over to wikipedia. I remember when Marvel comics filed for Chapter 11 in the mid 90s (December 1996 to be exact). They eventually came out much much stronger, by creating Marvel Studios and then were sold off to Disney. So there might be a silver lining for Kodak in the future. It definitely has the brand name behind it.
RIM finally replaces both CEOs. This is only really relevant as it could either mark the beginning of the end of RIM and all it’s Blackberry devices, or it could pave the way for a bold new era. Personally, I don’t care either way, but I’m not very optimistic about the future of RIM, and I’m not alone.
###Tennis
Novak Djokovic (and that carpet of hair he’s got on his head) beat Rafa Nadal at the Australian Open after a thrilling 6 hour long match - longest in Grand Slam history). His fifth grand slam.
###Websites
DuckDuckGo is a relative newcomer to the world of search (been out and about for a few years now). The logo is ugly as sin, and I find that the colour palette they’ve chosen is pretty..stark, but there’s something about these guys that reminds of Google back in the good old days; you know, before they became too big for their boots. The founder Gabriel Weinberg can be found on his site.
I’ve finally launched a Tumblog. Head on over to Distorted Lenses for a stream of images to feed your imagination.
Cerebral Interviews copyright © 2012 Khaled Abou Alfa
Volkswagen’s Autostadt - At first I wasn’t sure if this was real, or an architectural rendering. It’s real, and it’s insane.
Watchmen Prequel - It’s official. The Watchmen Prequels are coming. The creative teams and books are:
All of the talent involved are clearly A list talent, with the sole exception of Amanda Conner, who’s great in her own right, but I wouldn’t necessarily put her in the same league as these guys…but I’m quietly excited for her.
Distorted Lenses - is my latest site, best described as “Broken Kode for images”. Originally I used to use the excellent Asaph, but have transitioned over to Tumblr due to the lack of development on Asaph and the addition of a community via Tumblr.
I only got a chance to put this together over the weekend, so it’s still rough around the edges, but hopefully I’ll be sorting those edges out in due course. The design also gives a clear indication of what Broken Kode will be looking like in the not too distant future.
Today marks my last day at PDP. As of tomorrow, I am effectively between jobs.
In many respects I feel a slight amount of resentment about the fact that it was ended a little prematurely for my liking, but to be honest, that’s life and this is the card that we have been dealt with.
App Icon Template - Excellent resource and something that I’m hoping to be using in the not too distant future.
There Everyday - This stuck with me as very true. Building your site’s following is down to delivering consistently. In recent years, I’ve not really continued up with my site, but that’s to be expected since it’s not my day job, and I’ve been writing it for over 8 years now. I’ve been working hard on updating things around here a bit, which should start appearing shortly.
Bill Gates Interview - Excellent interview with Bill Gates. It goes into some details with regards to the comments Steve made in relation to Gates.
Arup Design Yearbook 2011 - is out. As always there’s some pretty interesting project in there. Some of my favourites images from this yearbook are:
Cerebral Interviews - The official Broken Kode newsletter, powered by TinyLetter. Been meaning to do something like this for a while. The goal is to craft 12 useful and entertaining emails in the year 2012. No more no less. Published at the end of every month.
iBooks Author - It’s a mixture of Microsoft word and Indesign but you get the added bonus of being able to publish and sell your wares on the Apple iBookstore…it’s going to be fun to see what comes out of this.
Sonora - A fast, lightweight music player for OS X. The killer feature of this app is speed. For me, the quality applications that I use on a regular basis are generally defined by their speed. Speed is such a fundamental element in any app because it’s that element which really defines the quality of the code behind it.
Second Crack - Marco has finally released his Second Crack static file blogging engine. My issue? I have NO IDEA how to actually make it run. The instructions are for a geek level a little above my height. I’m sure it will develop, for now I’ll just monitor and observe.
Have Faithe, Be Merrie - Go download this little Christmas song from Billy Corgan (was released today via the Smashing Pumpkins newsletter).
Automate posting in Wordpress from Calepin using IFTTT - I have a massive post coming up about my preferred blogging solution, but right now, I’m experimenting with Calepin. I really would like a self hosted version, but this workaround is interesting. The thing is that using this system the site would depend upon my server, Dropbox, Calepin, IFTTT and WordPress all working nicely together. As opposed to Dropbox and my server (along with a self hosted version of Calepin).
Joao Ruas - The clear successor to James Jean as one of those outstanding artists. When he first replaced Jean on Fables as the cover artist, I was sceptical. After this latest image, I no longer am sceptical. This is one of my favourite artists working in comics right now.
Pixeled Mind - Go and download some excellent wallpapers that honestly fit in with my design requirements on my iPhone. Also I really love the post-it note png that has a ‘thanks for downloading’ message in it. Just a lot of class in that.
iPen - Don’t own an iPad (yet, I’m holding out for the 3rd revision, always wait a couple of versions on a new Apple product), but when I do get one, this will be a key accessory for me.
The statistic I have heard was at least once in a person’s professional career, you are made redundant. I’ve been moderately immune to this over my years as an engineer at Arup, even though there were a great many rounds of redundancy over my years there, but yesterday it finally happened and the grim reaper of jobs caught up with me at my latest company.
After several months of things going downhill at the office, I was called in and got the message that things were getting worse and that unfortunately my time at PDP was going to be cut shorter than originally anticipated.
I was honestly feeling a bit held back living and working in Lebanon. Most of these reasons weren’t unexpected, it’s just anticipating a series of events is very different to living the reality and seeing how you feel or react.
There is a sense of optimism at the moment that I’ve not felt in a while. The world is all heading in all various directions and jobs are getting harder and harder to get by, however I am incredibly upbeat about the whole situation, liberated.
Now hunting for job is an incredibly frustrating ordeal that I thought I didn’t have to go through for a little while, however to be honest, I could see this coming a mile away…so much so that I had my CV completed the morning of the day I was told. I came prepared.
So it goes.
John Carter Trailer - Disney does seem to like these sorts of things. It’s like they’re trying to recreate Pirates of the Caribbean, first with Prince of Persia and now with this. Hopefully the story will be as fun as former rather than latter…
Noah Case - I like this case, but it’s extremely pricey to even think about. Still it’s nice little niche projects like this that are inspiring (via minimal mac )
Roll Pen Case - From my new fount favourite website (Jetpens), is this truly awesome pen case. Definitely getting myself one of these.
Christmas Catalog - Some excellent suggestions for those wondering what to get your man this Christmas.
Humans TXT - Interesting initiative. I guess this is the equivalent of an artist signing their drawings, but since oftentimes a website is the work of several people, this is a nice way to give credit. Usually I include some of this information in my CSS file, but this is an interesting alternative.
Last week was the first time that I actually considered my iPhone as an actual computer. The reason for this was actually out of necessity rather than me trying to be clever. I had the morning to myself, and I’d decided to go the mall, do some writing/creating. The issue was that my computer’s battery was completely drained and even so, it doesn’t typically last more than like 2-3 hours depending on what I’m using it for.
I solved my battery issue by dusting off my wireless keyboard (originally bought 4 years ago for my mac mini) and decided to use my iPhone instead. Bluetooth’ed the keyboard to my iPhone and I was off. The really surprising thing is of course that the size of the screen was more than adequate for my needs. In fact I was on such a roll that I reduced my inbox down to no emails (by replying to all the people that I kept putting off), wrote 7 scripts for my comic strip, wrote the previous post and this post - in short, a lot of writing.
Then I got to thinking why I was able to do this? Why was I able to focus so distinctly? Basically this setup is the ultimate in distraction free computing. The iPhone will allow you to work in one environment at a time. There is a focus that comes into play in the constraints of such a system. There are no other things that can distract you from actually doing other things. No comics you’ve downloaded, no music you could be fiddling to download. Hell, my computer system can be a distraction in and of itself.
This setup stops that dead in it’s track. The biggest part of the whole setup is the keyboard, and that is without a doubt the smallest keyboard on the market. 4 years later it’s still and industrial marvel for me. Sure it would be great to have a larger screen, but it’s not terrible. It’s a minor constraint. The great thing that you get from such as set up, is carrying is much much less and the battery life is INSANELY good compared to any single computer.
So I sit here actually computing while listening to internet radio (which I’m recording as well), while typing on a bluetoothed keyboard wirelessly and can go on for hours without having to really think about battery life or whatever.
The whole thing really blows my mind.
All the keyboard fuctions work as well, from the volume controls to the brightness functions. The elegance is insane. For those that have the above items, I strongly urge you to give it a go sometime, you might be surprised by what you end up coming up with.
The Insanely Great History of Apple - Great print. Can you imagine the research that went into this!
I know, it’s been a while and by this stage I’m probably talking to myself, which is fair enough to be honest. There have been several things that have prevented me from actually writing and posting, which is really down to both environment and workflow. I was originally going to write a separate post for each topic, but I found that the two topics were closely interrelated.
###Environment The environment to help me publish hasn’t been ideal. The first reason was due to the fact that I don’t have any internet access in my home. It’s been like that for over a month now, and it’s really starting to become disruptive to me. I could post from work, however the firewalls are restrictive and that makes it a colossal pain in the ass.
Apart from the technical aspects of my current situation, silence is reflective of the mood I’m currently in about the internet. Once upon a time I used to love the internet. I used to live it on a daily basis. I was actively involved in trying to bring something different to it on a regular basis. Over the last few months and even years now that has changed. I think the problem is that the internet has changed considerably - and I have not found my place in it.
The barriers are smaller and the noise is much, much larger. Over time I could see less and less people commenting on my website, and my silly Facebook posts would garner more attention and responses. And so you loose a certain amount of interest in keeping things fresh, keeping things moving on the site.
The great thing about this site is that it has a history and it has a distinct style about it. I’ve written some good stuff and some shitty stuff as well. I’ve learnt a great deal, interacted with some great people.
Is it time to retire the site? I don’t think so - after years, I’ve finally got it into a state that I like it (I’ve had this site design for nearly 2 years now). As I write this I wonder if I could take it to part of it’s previous glory. Of course the main issue here is that it’s a completely different place and time, so things will be more difficult and that took a hell of a lot of commitment.
The reason I am still confident in the future of words on this website, is because of my new found love for simple text. I have this appreciation now of words that I have written. I think part of this new found love is down to a few tools, Notational Velocity, my iPhone, Simplenote and the brilliance of Markdown. The seamless integration between these tools, and the fact that all of my thoughts and notes about anything and everything are always with me, (obviously organised in a meticulous fashion) helps me to feel more empowered.
Which happily brings me to my next point. Once my technical barriers that have an affect on my environment, the next barrier which needs to be removed are those to my workflow. I’ve outgrown the current CMS. The current crop of content management systems don’t really provide the level of respect to text files that I would want.
###Workflow So what is the system that I would like to adopt right now? Well after trolling through the internet, I’ve not found something that actually fits my requirements (well nothing that is fully baked).
One solution which I thought had some potential (so much so that I actually coded the next iteration of my site using that system already), was Stacey. This had a couple of problems, mainly the lack of an iOS text editor that could be readily integrated into the workflow (there’s that word again) and secondly there is no archiving system, even though this could be a prime solution if something like this was added, although I have no idea how active the project currently is.
Marco does seem to be working on something that might be exceedingly interesting. He’s not published the source code, because he’s tinkering around with it, which is REALLY annoying. Get on with it and just ship the damn thing Marco. Geeks will huddle around it instantly.
Trolling on Github, I found a bunch of options available that actually do this (clearly I’m not the only one that feels this way). The most promising of the lot was MopBlown, which I’m actually talking with Chris about at the moment, to try and help him move things along, we’ll see how that moves along.
The existing paradigm where you login into an admin panel, wait for shit to load, then click on pages, wait for more shit to load, then you type in things, the wait for shit to get published or built or whatever is not for a small website. There is a better solution for this. Here’s a list of the things that I would like to see in the next generation of website management system with a direct focus on text and markdown.
As you can tell, I’m in this weird transitional state at the moment. There are so many excellent and mature methods of publishing on the web, but none of them are for me at the moment, they don’t fit into my workflow.
I can’t get enough of Sandwich Video, which is the company run by Adam Lisagor. One of the things that I hate with a passion is a BAD advert, which is probably why I love a good ad so much. Adam has got one of those styles that you can easily distinguish recognise straight away. I suggest you have a look at the original Birdhouse video, followed by the Jawbox and finally the Square video as my top three favourites at the moment.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses - Probably the funniest shit I’ve seen on the net in a good long while. Honestly can’t stop laughing at this. (via kottke )
Inkling - Definitely an interesting technology. Don’t know if it will be useful to me, but it would be fun to try. Beats the whole scanning routine.
Like a Genius and a Sacred Whore - One of my favourite comic book writers of all times, Alejandro Jodorowsky answers some questions, I’ve read better interviews, but the recap of his works at the beginning is excellent. I even have a whole post to be written about the man, been working on it for a while now.
It’s been one of those weeks, where I’ve been tying a bunch of loose ends. Things that I’ve been meaning to finish, complete for ages.
Drawing for the President - One of my favourite artists in the world (well when he used to draw on a regular basis), Joe Quesada, getting commissioned to draw something by Barak Obama….nice.
Sometimes there’s a Man - A rock opera for Back to Work . Love little side projects like this, that have such a nice polish to them
Alan Moore Interview - Great interview on the Guardian website. Comics and Moore in general are becoming more mainstream, but it’s always nice to read a well thought out interview with Moore. Always on the lookout for what he’s creating.
Amy Winehouse Dead - She was a complete mess at the end of her life, but the one thing that will always remain is her music - Back to Black and Frank.
CBR Comicon Index - List of all the news coming out from Comicon in one handy location.
ComicCon News: The Massive - One of the first things that I’m actually interested in. Dark Horse Presents is seriously looking like a hell of a comic book anthology.
Strain Comic Adaptation - Guillermo del Toro will be the ‘executive producer’. The real news for me is that David Lapham is writing this and Mike Huddleson is drawing it. I’m so there when they finally release it as a collection.
Tax Evasion and the Greek Economy - Excellent little article about the situation in Greece at the moment, which has dominated the news for a good chunk of news time. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it all and what it means to the country that I once called home, and which now is home to my parents and brother…
The Mleeta Resistance Landmark - I’m actually completely lost for words, the Hezzbollah ‘Disneyland’. Honestly words are just not enough, go have a look at this thing.
Comics Journal 301 - Love the fact that this thing will be a beast of a book, and cock full of classic stuff to read. Especially love the Dave Sim interview, god I’ve missed TCJ in print…seriously.
reMIND - Trying to get back into drawing again (things are finally starting to calm down after the wedding etc). This is an awesome resource of links and thoughts about putting a graphic novel together, by someone who actually has done it. Congrats to Jason.
Top Shelf 2011 Releases - It’s been a while since I’ve read anything published by Top Shelf, but there are some great things being published this year under their banner.
TreeShirt - It’s not very common for me to see a Lebanese initiative that I honestly like, so this was a great surprise for me, even though they are a bit on the pricey side.
Sami Basri - The man behind the artwork on the upcoming Voodoo ongoing series. Don’t fuck this up buddy, please kill it, Voodoo and Jeremy are easily the best WS characters.
Mad Men Season 5 Greenlit - The title makes it out as though this whole thing was Jon Hamm not agreeing to a previous deal…which I don’t think was the case. Whatever the actual reasons were, I’m just glad we have another 3 seasons of Mad Men (hopefully?)
The Definitive Guide To The DC Comics Reboot - Great table by the iFanboy guys in putting all this information together. The thing that popped out for me was Scott lobdell writing no less than 3 books. Bob Harras does like that guy. The truth is I have read some pretty awesome Lobdell books, but then again I’ve also read a bunch of real crap by the man in the past. His X-men/Wildcats with Travis Charest is definitely the high point for me.
Due to the fact that I got married, moved to Beirut and still don’t have internet access, update on the ‘Kode have been kept to a minimum (also internet at work blocks my website, so that’s been a bit of a pain as well, trust me I would love to discuss what’s been on my mind).
Add to the fact that I’m off to Malaysia for my honeymoon and well things will probably remain pretty quiet until after I get back towards the end of June. Hopefully we’ll have a phone line, proper internet and we can start calming down and getting down to the job of creating.
Productive Macs Bundle - I’ve not bought a bundle in a pretty long time, but I’ve been meaning to buy TextExpander for a while. For a little less, you also get 7 more apps.
Place for Trace - Either going to make myself one of these, or I’m definitely going to be buying one via SwissMiss.
Annie Wu - That Flight of the Concords print is most excellent. Love her style, definitely an artist worth looking out for.
Bill Willingham interview mammoth - Seriously congrats on 10 years of Fables.
City of Culture of Galicia - This project seems completely insane. The architects are Eisenman Achitects . Spain is definitely one of those places that truly inspires greatly mad architecture.
On Office Magazine - Excellent website for what’s going on in the world of contemporary architecture and design. Been on a bit of a mission to filter out the good ones. Shame their RSS feed is not a full feed, but rather a snippet.
Todd McLellan - Love this series so much. Will definitely try and get a print of the blown up Pentax (if/when it appears on 20x200) or the Old Typewriter.
USM Modular Furniture - Been looking for a modular way to store all my books. Can’t get these in Lebanon (which is just as well, because they are bloody expensive).
Sometimes it takes a good long time for the penny to drop, even if you’ve been doing it for a seriously long time. For me the way in which I take and write notes (both at work and during play) has changed on the basis of getting an iPhone, installing Notational Velocity and having a web interface with Simplenote all linked together.
The effect that I didn’t actually expect was that the above three occurrences effectively changed my general workflow and how I take notes in my moleskin, and what ultimately that moleskin is actually used for, and by doing that it’s solved one of the biggest problems I actually had with taking notes in my moleskin.
###Moleskines My favourite type of notebook to use is my moleskins. I’ve been using these for nearly 7 years by now. Definitely read the wikipedia entry about the history of the Mokeskine, it’s actually pretty interesting. The ones that I have been using exclusively are the A5 notebooks, in black hardback, no lines, with the thinner pages.
I used my moleskine for two things really. Taking notes and sketching ideas out. Most of my projects and designs start like this. Based on the way my mind works, I thought that it would be best to handwrite all of my notes and thoughts down and then later take these notes out and put them onto the computer.
What I noticed was that I would come back to my diagrams, sketches and doodles all the time, but I’d rarely come back to my long form notes, and I’d end up rehashing sometimes these notes and ideas again and again. The problem was I never actually did that, and it was pretty rare that I would go back and actually use these written notes in a meaningful way. Basically I was using the moleskine (at least when it came to notes) as a note dumping ground, with some useful sketches inbetween.
And that was fine. The new way is better.
The way I justified it was that before writing any meaningful words, I was getting them out of my system first. Ultimately the system was flawed, and rather than try and find a way to fix it, I kept using the same method. It’s always good to rethink something that you’ve been doing for a long while and actually assess whether or not that is the best way to do things.
###Whitelines Obviously before I got settled on Moleskine notebooks, I went through a vast number of notebooks, and still try out various ones from time to time. The ones that I am actually contemplating on getting are the Whitelines series of notebooks. I’ve owned one in the past, which was the wirebound A5 version. The paper is lovely to use and honestly the work does in fact pop off the page. However I think it’s definitely not the right size for the kind of work that I would use that for. I think I’ll be getting the A4 size for the sketching I envision in those notebooks and keeping my A5 moleskins for the general smaller ideas/sketches and notes that I like to take throughout the day.
###The New Paradigm I’ve now basically separated the way in which I organise my thoughts (because that’s what I’m doing). The first has most (over 90%) of my notes written within one of the three inputs I mentioned above, while the moleskines are basically used only for sketches and maybe small notes if I don’t have the facility to actually input the data electronically (because it wouldn’t be in the moment).
What this does is it basically allows me to now search all of my notes instantly. It also allows me to organise them and file them in a structured way - which definitely appeals to my filing junkie nature (I will be talking about this elsewhere in the future).
My moleskines are now effectively books filled with sketches, doodles, ideas, quick thoughts. There’s something pure about that setup. There’s something empowering. I must admit that out of habit I do go for my moleskine to start writing my list of things to do at work, and have to stop myself a bit and redirect myself to the computer to type that stuff in, but now when I look at my book, it’s just filled with sketches and diagrams and tiny notes that are so much more useful.
The single best bit of advise I can give about filing your notes is given by (of Mac Power users and macsparky fame). Here’s a couple of posts to get you going:
I basically follow the same convention and went ahead and changed all of my colons to an ‘x’ as well. This didn’t take me too long as I have only 100 notes so the pain barrier was pretty small.
But here are a couple of tips I have myself to ease things for me as well. The way I come up with the initial letters to use is basically using the first and last letter of that particular word. So wedding would be wg. When it’s two words, then it’s basically the first letter of each word, so Broken Kode would be bk. This way I don’t have to think about whether or not I’ve used this particular word or not.
###Organisation Having finally organised my written notes, it was time to organise my moleskine a bit as well. The thing that I definitely don’t like is how my book after a while becomes messy on the inside. It’s not as clear what project I’m talking about instantly, because I never used a unified header for each and every page.
This is something I’m still working on to be honest, and so don’t have a clear solution, but the convention I’m working on at the moment basically lays things out in the following way. Right at the top of the page I put the following three items:
The function is usually on of the following:
This is neatly lined up at the very top of the page. This convention only took me 9 years of engineering to come up with (d’oh). I guess it’s better late than never and it proves that you can always find better ways to doing something, that makes you sit up and think, well that’s much better.
###Alternatives The fact that I’ve settled and fallen in love with this setup, doesn’t mean that it’s the right setup for you. Instantly Notational Velocity and Simplenote have become my favourite productive tools in the world. They organise my thoughts and information in such a way that information relating to me is now at my finger tips (literally).
There are those that want more information. That want to put images and other things within their documents/notes, and for that sort of thing there are soo many alternatives, so I guess it’s a question of trying what works best for you, but hopefully this setup gives you an insight as to what works for me, and maybe you can pull on some of that to make it work for you.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes trailer - This looks interesting, except for a few things. The acting looks a bit hammy, with the dialogue just grating on me a bit (and it’s only a trailer), the super confident/pretty actors, that are meant to be science geniuses (which I don’t buy) and the font used for the text inbetween scene just felt like the wrong choice; but damn do those monkeys look creepy.
Just got back from work, I believe having said goodbye to the winter officially. Looking at the weather report for the next few days (yeah I’m getting a bit nervous about the wedding, which I think is normal - but hey any outdoor wedding is going to have those kind of fears), it’s only blue skies and sunny weather.
Having gone through a winter here before, I knew that basically there was one final shower/storm and that would be it. I believe that was yesterday.
The winter this year has been long and relatively hard. The biggest mistake I made was thinking that I could buy a house in Lebanon at this stage. What a fool. We wasted easily around 6 months running around Lebanon trying to find the suitable home, ultimately for nothing.
There where several reasons for me to change my mind, but ultimately it just wasn’t the time for it. Fast forward a few months and we’ve basically chosen the main furniture (the bedroom, the living room, the dining room), we’ve chosen most of the white goods, even though the advertising in Lebanon is created by a crock of lying shitbags - more on this some other time.
I remember the first time I came into contact. It was in Greece during one of my many trips from London. I was sitting in the kitchen and my mother had just brewed a new pot of coffee, drip filter with evaporated milk (makes it taste soo amazing and the colour is brilliant as well).
So anyway she pulls out this contoured mug with a handle and saucer. The feel on the outside was earthen and inviting. On the inside with this gleaming white polished inside. Once you put this mug to your lips it just felt correct. It felt right.
The rim was thin at the top but it got bigger gradually as it went down. That had the effect of giving you the impression that the rim was thin and delicate (which appears to be in vogue at the moment), but the actual mug gave it the impression that it was heavy and sturdy from the bottom.
That was the start of my love for S&P products.
###The Company Again, as with a lot of the topics that I will be discussing on the ‘Kode, information about these items is very sparse on the internet. I found the parent company Bambi first, which then led me to the main website. The best introduction to the company is off the official website itself:
Salt&Pepper is a key brand of Australian company, Bambis. It’s Head Office is in Melbourne, Australia. Bambis (www.bambis.com.au) was founded in 1970 by Bambis Pouroundis. At the time it was a two-person operation, mainly specialized in supplying gift shops. Bambis was a pioneer in establishing Australian trade relationships with Europe and Asia.
In the late 1980’s, the company embarked on a brand-building strategy with a wide range of contemporary products appealing to the middle to upper end of the market. It was then that the Salt&Pepper brand was born. Salt&Pepper is an acronym of the names of the driving force and founders of the brand, brother and sister team, Sissi Stasios and Harry Pourounidis. Sissi is the Creative Director and Harry is the Managing Director.
The global journey commenced in 2005 when the Bambis team joined forces with Paul Aerts (Aerts NV) from Belgium and Michael Vitsaxakis (EVE SA) from Greece to bring Salt&Pepper to Europe. Both Aerts and EVE are considered market leaders in their respective countries, hence an ideal combination of skills and experience was formed to ensure a successful launch of the brand.
From its launch in 1995, their passion has seen the brand grow to be one of Australia’s most successful exports, with its contemporary designs distributed to over 54 countries around the world. It offers fashion for the home at an affordable price.
Which all makes sense as to why I saw these excellent examples of kitchenware in Greece, while they had not yet reached the shores of England. Since then the brand has expanded considerably, as I was able to buy the same mugs in Beirut, from the same collection that my mum got in Greece.
However I’ve discussed this with my mother and she loves their stuff just as much as I do, and we’re convinced that someone very high up (I’m thinking either the brother or the sister) in the company must be a designer of some sort that would allow them to keep that level of elegance in their product line. The thing you can guarantee is that the products all look elegant, but restrained. Not looking design for the sake of it (as with much kitchenware, to distinguish itself from the rest).
While I could be wrong, but reading the titles of the ‘S’ part of the S&P, it appears that Sissi is the ‘Creative Director’, while Harry is the managing director. So Sissi clearly is the creative force in this endeavour and we have her to thank for the overall product line?
The truth is I would love to be able to go into an S&P store and just browse the shelves with their products. There is this amazing consistency of quality design. The way S&P distinguish themselves is through keeping the same level of cognisant design in all of the product lines - something which is actually extremely difficult to achieve in any line of business.
The most recent example of this was when my mother bought a mug over from Greece on a recent trip to Lebanon. The mug was white with a black bottom and a thin gold line separating the two. The form of the mug and the starkness of the black instantly signalled to me what I was looking at. Without hesitation I said ‘Salt & Pepper’.
###Website It comes as little surprise that the official website is also a thing of great beauty that really does showcase the huge number of lines. I honestly had no idea until I found the website, which obviously is not that easy to find, seeing the nature of the name involved.
The stark black and white core colours work obviously with the logo, but as you move through the various ranges you also get the titles of the product range in different colours, to add that bit of life in the design, while the product images themselves take those colours further.
###Follow Up I wish I could discuss it with the owners in more detail, or someone in their creative department. I’ll be updating this post as and when I get more information.
Society6 - Definitely something I would like to try in the future. I want to get back into regular drawing and creating artwork, so here’s hoping after all this wedding stuff is over I’ll get a chance to do more of this sort of thing.
Webstock Past Talks - Heard enough about these talks. Will definitely be checking them all out at some point, once things have settled down here before the wedding.
So the new version of TaskPaper (version 2.2.3) is out, offered at a great discount, which is nice for us original buyers. Also the latest version of Notational Velocity is also out (Beta 5)
Now I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Hog Bay Software, but I think I’ve finally seen why Notational Velocity works for me and the reasons why TaskPaper, although an excellently put together application, really actually never clicked, even though I tried, really hard to get into it.
###Workflow The workflow is probably the single most significant aspect of Notational Velocity’s success with how I want to write things. The secret sauce is the single input text field at the top of the application.
After a few years with Google Chrome I am now completely programmed to use an application using a single text input field. I now crave the single line input text field that also offers search and inputing text flexibility, within that same space in all of my applications.
I guess the single essential innovation that works for me on Google Chrome that I miss the most when I flip over to Safari, is that input text field. Sure I love the tabs at the top, but the input field is far more essential and without it I feel like something important has been disrupted.
The thing is TaskPaper is great in it’s own right. It really is a well crafted piece of software, and one that has a lot of quality oozing everywhere, the problem is that there is a fundamental problem with regards to how it was conceived to be used.
Also another important feature is how titles are generated in comparison. While both pretty simple, the fact that the first thing you write in the text field before pressing return is the title, again just works.
###Synchronisation One of the things that NV has over TP is the seamless integration with Simplenote and Dropbox. It seems that Jesse wants to get this done for the iOS version, however the sad truth is that this doesn’t exist at the moment. You can synchronise using simpletext.ws, which has a pretty horrible web interface. So much so it’s distracting.
While the web version of simplenote has the clever search bar at the top and visually reminds you of the software on your mac. I guess because I write notes at work on my windowz machine, and then edit on the fly on my iPhone and then do the heavy writing on my Mac at home, the integration works so much better for me.
From the comments in the post it does seem like it’s on the cards, but basically taking too long, the free versions have won me over (even though I’ve paid for both the Mac and the iOS versions).
###NV wishlist Don’t get me wrong, I still think there are a few things that I would like Notational Velocity to have before it honestly becomes the perfect text editor. In particular is markdown integration.
I’d like to be able to write in markdown and have the words change in front of my eyes, if it’s an option that I choose to activate. Leave the text exactly as it is (so all the original markdown text will be available when I view it in Simplenote) but this would be an excellent feature. I don’t really want a separate generator, just let it update then and there.
While this isn’t a feature request, I would like some of that animated polish that is found in TaskPaper to find it’s way back into Notational Velocity. I know that Zachary Schneirov is already taking some queues from TaskPaper (such as the lists and @done), so some other little interesting visual animations would add to the polish (as in when creating formatting etc).
So will I be slapping down some cash on TaskPaper? No, because it doesn’t fit my workflow and I’ll be deleting it off my iPhone as well since it’s just not something I’m likely to use now that I have established my workflow with the NV/Simplenote note taking combination.
Browserling - cross-browser testing in your browser. Finally a website that doesn’t suck for testing out what everything looks like on all browsers (via brett)

One of the things that I typically don’t do with most of my posts is come back and edit and change. For some reason I always felt that in terms of internet etiquette that was bad form - that will change with these posts. These posts are not intended to be perfect out of the door. I will hopefully have done some meaningful reasearch for them, however they will be modified as time goes by.
The first post in a long and hopefully interesting series of posts on Cognisant Design concentrates on a small part of a much large product, specifically the key to my car. It’s honestly very rare for Google to disappoint me and not give me back some information about something I’m looking for.
One of the things that I touch a feel and fiddle with every single day is my car key and then I saw it mentioned on Objectified as well and it just struck me that this key basically encompassed a lot of what I am talking about with Cognisant Design.
###Functionality When is a key, not just a key? When it’s also the central lock as well, and the car trunk as well. Admittedly I don’t use the trunk feature much. The simple fact is that they buttons
Oh and they’re all equipped with immobiliser technologies - which basically translates to the car doesn’t move if you don’t have the key, which is a nice feature for those thieving bastards (I’m sure those same thieving bastards have found ways around it, but hey you don’t want to make it easy on them).
And then of course you’ve got the metal key itself, tightly tucked away for when you need it with the press of an incredibly inviting metal button, which brings us nicely to the next important point.
###Flip Action This is the action of the key flipping open from it’s hidden position. I guess this has been honed from millions of cards sold, but basically there is an undeniable weight to the key springing open. It clicks into place with a purposeful click. It’s like a samurai being drawn. The thing is it’s totally addictive, so you find yourself clicking it constantly.
The button that releases the key mechanism is curved at the top which again is just exactly the way it should be rather than a flat button. It’s details like this that only serve to enhance what is truly a great piece of industrial design.
###Weight This is one of the most prominent aspects I find. The weight to size ratio of a product is always something that drives home quality in a product. The current iPhone for example is very dense in weight due to the glass front and back. When compared to another smartphone from say Samsung, you get this feel of much more inherent quality due to the weight.
That same concept is in this key. While I’m sure they could have made it lighter, doing so would basically make it feel cheap, and I’m sure that was not what the original designers were aiming for here. Which brings us to part of the reason for making it heavy.
###The Metal Key The person who brought this to my attention was my brother. See he’s got a Mercedes A-Class which is the Mercedes equivalent of the Golf, small hatchback, with a bit of German design thrown in. The key on that car is this plastic thing with a few buttons at the top. Essentially it’s missing the point here, an aspect of which VW have got it so right.
Obviously the sturdiness of the key is also important to complete the overall package, and again the key is a nice metal rectangular block, that again feels weighty due to the metal base which it swivels on.
###Ergonomic Design The final part of this exploration is basically the ‘je ne sais quoi’ factor. The ergonomic design of the key is just so terrible inviting. The groove at the top, just after the buttons invite you to rub your thumb there every single time you hold the key. The curved edges allow you to quickly and addictively flip the key in your hand again and again. Even the little VW logo which is made out of soft silicone is calling you to feel and pinch and poke with your nail.
And because no proper article about something technical is really complete, here is a disassembly of the key in question so you can see what the details are like on the inside.
###Lawsuit Action in searching around for more information about the Smart Key, i stumbled on a bunch of articles, completely unrelated to the topic of the design of these keys, but thought it was interesting as it basically dealt with legal action in relation to these keys. Smart Key Litigation and this FAQ, also there’s this document directly from VW
###Follow up One of the things that I want to make sure these posts have is a certain amount of longevity. I’m not writing these posts for the sake of writing them, but rather because I want to highlight specific things in my life that are designed in the way that I want them designed, and to show some appreciation.
Unfortunately due to how the coorporate world operates, it’s sometimes very difficult to single out the team or persons responsible for a design, unless the achieve cult status in product design, in which case you end up with the question of how much they actually contributed and how much of this was their ideas.
That’s a topic for another issue. Rather than go there, I would rather like to find out more about something if i’ve not covered it here. If there are articles, links or books that describe the topic I’ve written about, I really want to hear about it. If you’re one of the people that actually worked on this and are no longer working at this company and don’t mind talking about the experience, again I would like to hear from you.
I guess in a round about way, I’m trying to put a spotlight on aspects of design that are not typically considered, or really given their due.
The thing that I naturally permeate towards instinctively are are the things that I basically want, admire or are curious about. These are the things that I basically would like to have. These are the things that put a smile on my face, and which ultimately I like to talk about.
Cognisant: adjective [ predic. ] having knowledge or being aware of
This thinking actually can be attributed in many ways to Objectified which honestly completely changed the way I look and appreciate products and design. I guess that was the point of it all, but it seriously touched me in a profound way that no other documentary has ever done. A year and a half after I watched it I still think about things it said or tried to say. Sure there were several douche bags on there, but the message was there.
Crucially, in an in advert way it’s basically opened my eyes as to what this particular site will be about and has been building towards all these years.
While I’ve always wanted a space for my projects to live, and my art, it’s only a small part of me and there may be months before I am able to show what I’m working on a regular basis, even though I honestly am creating things on a relatively regular basis. It’s not just about what I create, it’s not just my therapy. It needed focus.
Which brings us to the here and now. Over the last couple of years I’ve been honing and observing things as I develop a sense of what I like and what I don’t like. Sometimes I used this site to achieve this. Recently I’ve been thinking that ultimately the site needed a direction, something it’s not had since it began. The focus seemed to be on design in general, then it meandered off to blogging software, which was like this loop of eating it’s own tail.
The thing that I hope to concentrate on in the future is the idea Cognisant Design.
It took a bloody long time to finally come up with this collection of words. I kept floating between ‘Considered’ and ‘Cognisant’. They are close to each other in meaning, but it’s more than thinking about something. It’s about knowing the reasons for those decisions. I’m sure I’m not the first to come up with these words together, but I hope to bring to the fore what this actually means and highlight examples of this design sense in action.
It’s not a question of minimal design. It’s not a question of functional design, it’s a question of design that is thought out completely, where things we done in a very calculated fashion, even if those calculations lead to what might be hyper detail or bright bursts of colour.
Although I’ve tried to describe it in this post, I feel that the best way to show what it is that I am talking about is to actually show rather than tell. I don’t think I can post this sort of thing on a regular basis, so the linkblogging will continue, however in addition to these quick things I will be focusing on Cognisant Design and hopefully we’ll all learn something new together.
I’m sure I’m like seriously late to the party, but if I’m late, then I’m sure a ton of people are late as well. Recently been getting back into writing on a daily basis. It’s actually been easier than I thought, but one of the things that I aim to do is basically write and think in Markdown.
For those who don’t understand what that is, basically it’s a syntax for writing words that can be converted into other formats, with all sorts of embellishes (bold, italic, links etc), while maintaining a simple text file.
Obviously then you realise that there is the next step up which is MultiMarkdown and even something called Maruku which basically enhance the original Markdown with additional options and syntax, and extend the functionality to things other than websites.
The idea of just writing something in text which can then be converted into any number of formats that can be used in a number of ways is something that not only appeals to me, but i wish I’d copped onto this amazing benefit years and years ago. Trust me, don’t make the same mistake I did.
The “q” trick - Posted over a year ago, but I’m only now starting to get into Notational Velocity and Simplenote so it’s all starting to make sense now.
Read & Trust - Now see this is interesting. It’s basically a much better 9rules from way back. For those who don’t know what 9rules was, it was one of the original blogging networks. The great thing about Read & Trust is that it appears to be run by someone who appreciates and knows what they’re doing. One of my biggest online failures was Inksmith. I loved the idea and it’s a shame it never came to be as i originally envisioned it, but I guess having something like this is the next best thing.
I’ve been writing for nearly a week now on a regular basis. Most of the time it’s just words falling out of my brain and onto the page. On the side however I’ve been working on a pretty long post, that I knew had a point to it, but honestly I didn’t know where it was actually going.
The ultimate goal of this post was to define the need for this site in a world that doesn’t read ‘blogs’ anymore. The idea was that I change with the times and this site becomes more than me talking about my bonsai tree (which I love, but nearly killed) or my favourite iPhone application, rather it will be talking about these issues, however done in a completely different way, with a very different focus - it will become clear once I’ve actually posted that article, I assure you.
The thing that’s really struck me however is the fact that I wouldn’t have reached my goal and ultimately my focus had I not actually written all these other words and effectively made some space for the idea to come to the surface. The outcome of this particular post will be a complete shift in they way content is written and presented on this site, as I shift it and it becomes something different. In a changing world it’s important that one understands when you have to move on, adapt or start over.
In this case the ‘kode will remain giving some personal thoughts, and providing links, but ultimately it will be much more focused. How long will it take before I can deliver this vision, I’m not sure. I get married in a little over a month and as you can imagine we’re racing to the finish line trying to sort out all sorts of things, so I’m assuming that it won’t happen until after the wedding, but alas if I do get some time to complete these things I’m definitely going take that opportunity.
Good news everyone, my bonsai tree stopped shedding it’s leaves and today the leaves that are left are looking so bright and green, it’s most excellent. I honestly did get scared there for a while, but I cleaned off all the dead leaves and then just put it near the window.
The window is an eastern facing window, but due to the buildings around us, there isn’t any direct sunlight till much later in the day, so it gets some great light in the morning with no direct sunlight till around 3pm. The tree will definitely be coming with me when I move to Beirut which is only a little over a month away, which is excellent.
Yesterday was a day for the family. Yasmine and I got all the wedding cards yesterday (with most of the names written on in Arabic), so the long process of giving everyone their cards. We should have all of the cards sent out to everyone outside Lebanon by Monday morning, but over here in Lebanon we need to be giving the cards to everyone.
The nice thing is that we are just seeing everyone in the family which is nice. Yesterday we went to most of my mum’s sisters and brothers (there are a couple we’ve missed out on) and hopefully during the week we should be seeing the Abou Alfa’s.
The nice thing has been seeing everyone’s reaction to the cards, which are slightly different to what is typically passed around. The best interpretation was by my aunt Sahar who actually made a fantastic observation for the design on the envelope.
The way she explained the design was that the roots signified the two families, while the trees at the top signify the family that we are about to build together, which I thought was a really nice interpretation of the art.
So Yasmine got us a bonsai tree last week. So I did the geeky thing and downloaded this bonsai app for my iPhone and did some research on the internet about how to take care of the bonsai tree and then I went forth and overwatered the plant so that it’s basically shedding most of it’s leaves.
Now the good news is that I think it’s stopped shedding leaves at a crazy rate but I basically killed a ton of the leaves in these last two days by watering it every day, thinking that the soil had to be kept moist all the time…nope big mistake, at least for the bonsai tree that I currently have.
Unfortunately the damage got done the second day that I watered the plant. One day it was able to handle it, but two days in a row basically suffocated it and didn’t let it get enough oxygen to the roots, which basically made it shut down. Now it seems that this isn’t the end of the world (as long as I don’t overwater it again) but that you can’t stress the tree like this many times because it will permanently shut down. The thing is I absolutely LOVE this plant. I’ve always wanted a bonsai tree and now that I got one, I nearly bloody killed it within 2 days of over doing it.
God help me not make this sort of mistake when/if (hopefully) have kids. I mean seriously I feel terrible that I’ve done that to my bonsai tree, but the problem is these things should honestly come with a manual and the name and type of tree and links to a website where the proper way to care for these delicate plants. I feel terrible about my bonsai tree, hopefully it’ll start to flourish and produce those deep green leaves again sometime soon.
Harry Houdini - Love these retrospective birthdays on Google. Like when they put Will Eisner’s birthday on there a few weeks ago.
Architect’s Sketchbook - Nothing in particular grabbing my attention, but it’s always nice to see what’s going on in the world of architecture. I do feel a bit displaced from it at the moment, so I’m going to need to try and get myself back into it again and start subscribing to some architecture magazines and getting some more books in the near future.
Since I started with a new slate on my macbook (ie just reinstalled everything and started from new), the one breakout piece of software that will forever become a part of my computer experience is Notational Velocity.
They say that the best things in life are free, well this is definitely one of the best applications that I currently have on my machine. The reason for it is simple. It’s does one thing, but it does it better than anything else on the mac.
It takes notes and allows you a level of customisation and has been thought out soo well. It’s completely unobtrusive and it’s one of the lightest programs you’ll ever run. The thing is nearly instantly loaded.
I currently love having the note titles on the left hand side, with the actual notes located on the right hand side.
I remember downloading this years ago, and then just uninstalling it pretty quickly. I just didn’t understand the beauty of the simplicity.
Everything is achieved through shortcuts, which are pretty easy to learn.
And that’s about all you need to know.
It syncs to Simplenote with a free iPhone application, which is awesome. The actual application is super simple, nothing overly complicated, and it’s blindingly fast. Seriously fast in syncing. It’s not instant or live, but it might just as well be.
For my needs at the moment, which is basically putting down ideas and thoughts, it’s nice and simple and extremely convenient. If you tried this application years ago and didn’t know what to do with it (like I did), I seriously think you should check it out again, it’s worth your time.
The Lost Thing - A short film based on the book by Shaun Tan. Love the feel, the website. A must order on DVD.
Navigating Mac Dialog Boxes - This is one of those things that I honestly haven’t worked out until now, nearly 4 years on a Mac, d’oh!
Help Nathan Buy Firefly - The website address says it all. The best thing Joss Whedon ever created was Firefly.
A selection of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts - For my own purposes, wish this was done as a pdf as well.
iTunes 10 and Mac App Store icons replacement ~ ANTREPO BLOG / A2591
Mike Monteiro Interview - Unlike most of DB’s podcats, the pipeline is a bit hit and miss. This interview is a definite hit. Listened to it yesterday on my long walk around Athens, and found that while Mike was talking about graphic design and websites in particular, the term design and the concepts he was talking about could easily be moved over to the building design industry and therefore/probably to many other design/client based industries. Definitely worth listening to, at least the last 10 minutes.
Mortal Kombat Web Episodes - This is so dark, it’s brilliant. Some of the acting is a bit hammy, but the direction is excellent. Can’t wait to see the rest those 10 episodes.
Paul Haggis Vs. the Church of Scientology - Huge article on the topic of those nutbags (via Kottke).
Save as WWF - This is a great idea,…up to a point. At work, I need to print things out, although I am probably in the minority. At home I’ve not owned a printer for many, many, many years.
TuneUp | Digital Music Management & Music Discovery for iTunes & WMP
Taylor Carrigan - As I’m using several of the man’s icons thought I send him some linky love for making my desktop look better. I wish he would create some Google Chrome document icons as well though to complete the transition.
The king of Apple talk radio - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech
Periscope Studio Does Mad Men Art - Love this series, love these collectives of comic book artists that decide on a theme for a week and do some art. It’s just pretty good fun.
Personal Space - Great promotional video for KLM’s personal space. The very final scene is BRILLIANT.
The King of Limbs - New Radiohead album, yes! After In Rainbows with the boys back to their best, I’m really looking forward to this (only a few days away, read: saturday). And in other music news, apparently ‘The Arcade Fire’ got a Grammy, which is fantastic, because that album seriously deserves it. (via Kottke).
Amazon Windowshop Beta - Probably been around for a while, but I’ve not seen anyone talk about this, best way to browse things on Amazon I have ever seen. It’s a shame it’s done on Flash as it honestly could have easily been done using HTML and Javascript, but damn is that a good way. My wishlist has increased exponentially since I found this thing out.
So I’m off to Greece on Saturday. This is my first time off since I started work in Lebanon and at PDP. I’ve had a couple of days off here and there (Bank holidays, not my own days off mind) and it’s been a pretty long slog. There’s sooo much that has happened over the various months that honestly I don’t know where to start.
Needless to say I feel it’s well deserved. To be fair it’s not all fun and games as I’ll be trying to sort out my suit for the wedding and also trying to finish off the invitation cards (we’ve been designing the hell out of these cards with Yasmine).
NoteSlate - I really hope this thing gets made. Having this at work would rock so hard it’s unreal.
ZIIIRO - I love the thought process on these watches. I would never replace my Raymond Weil watch, but this is a good looking piece of design.
Does Egypt Need Twitter? - Malcolm Gladwell on the use of social media in Egypt.
News Desk: Does Egypt Need Twitter? : The New Yorker
Creator Profiles - Paul Gravett has done the heavy lifting for you and given you the major comic book creators of our generation and the books they’ve created. Looking for something to read, and get into serious comic book work, this is where you start.
Watch Kevin Smith’s Post-’Red State’ Sundance Speech; Read His Explanation of the Distro Plan | /Film
So I’ve been reading and watching a whole bunch of stuff recently about the User Interface (UI) of Android versus iOS. How in typical Google fashion, Android is following the general Google method of doing things. Ship fast, ship early, iterate as many times as you can.
Typically the people that are making these comments are at their hearts Mac geeks. Not in a bad way, they’ve just decided many many years ago (way before I decided to make the switch) that the Apple and Mac philosophy is the one for them. For the most part I actually agree with them.
However that isn’t to say that there isn’t an alternative. And the DIFFERENCE here is actually in people. Probably the smartest move that Google could have done is bringing Matius Duarte into the fold.
Honeycomb being the first thing that can actually be said to be his own contribution to the whole system shows a unification. Is it perfect? Hardly, but it’s MILES infront of where it used to be and it will continue in that vein as the Googlers have really started to brainwash their employees and you can see it.
My cousin went on a Google conference in Jordan (apparently a hub for creating software in the Middle East, I didn’t know that) and when he came back, honestly the stories that he was telling me and the obsession they were talking about was interesting for me. They really believe.
I agree with Gruubs about not getting the effable, it’s something you can’t describe. Be it the animation between pages, be it the screen or be it the industrial design. Is there scope for addition? Sure, but that’s the Apple way. Build a foundation and then add to it incrementally once you’ve understood exactly how to solve a problem elegantly.
From my point of view, I’m just really excited to see what the two operating systems will do in the future, and how they’ll move forward, feeding hopefully of each other’s good parts. Honeycomb is probably the first real version which you could start to consider being something unified, but hey it’s only 6 short months before the next version of iOS is out and you KNOW that it’ll push the envelope further by about 8 months for Google to catch up.
Every once in a while someone talks about WebOS (formerly Palm, now HP),
There really isn’t much of a “tablet” market - Excellent post by Marco Arment, who is definitely taking the place of Gruubs in the go to Apple guy (hell he even mentioned it slightly in the recent ‘Talk Show’ podcast. To be clear, I actually really love what Gruubs has done and honestly didn’t think there was space for another similar kind of blog, but Marco’s is definitely one of them.
Anil Dash - See that’s what I’m talking about, a bit of good old fashioned blogging. Also I miss browsing blogs and getting design ideas or things that they’ve done. In this case, the ‘Read Later’ button which links to Instapaper. That’s pretty damn cool. For the longer posts, definitely a must, need to get onto that.
RSS5000 - Damn I want an iPad just for that (well and a bunch of other things, but I’m waiting for the second if not the third generation). Shame about the name, what is this? A pun on The Terminator?
Also, Minimal Mac, eh, very nice.
Josh Groban Sings Kanye West Tweets - Possibly the funniest shit you’ll see on youtube this year, seriously.
Over on CBR, Jason Aaron has written a little article in his Where The Hell Am I column where he basically tells Alan Moore to go fuck himself….erm here’s some choice quotes:
Just to be clear what I think of both creators, I really love both of them. Alan Moore obviously more than Aaron, although Scalped is one of the best things that I buy, period. I’ve not read much else from Aaron except the amazing Otherside, so I’m looking at this as someone who is partial to both creators.
Seriously, I will LEAVE this country on the basis that the banking sector is a complete and utter fucking bullshit institute. They fucks have absolutely no idea that I don’t like them, nor do I like seeing their disgusting faces, nor do I like their suit wearing employees that actually have no idea.
Damn, the whole news years thing came and went by and I didn’t get a chance to finish off my end of 2010 review. Still got a couple more posts on this.
The countless articles I’ve read online and in the various magazines I’ve bought over the year don’t get counted. The tweets I’ve read and wasted more time on, don’t get counted. That said, I am a bit embarressed to confess that on more than one occasion I would by the Economist (which I honestly believe is one of the best magazines for getting information on what’s going on in the world) and not actually read much of it, past the cover story. I think what I’ll try and do is, once a month try and actually get through an issue of the economist. Every week is a tall order, but once a month should be ok.
I also bought a few issues of Wired. The typical price in Lebanon is 19,000LL, which is approximately $12.5, around 8.5 quid, which is nearly double the cover price. Which is probably why I’m going to try and limit myself to reading this magazine once every couple of months.
I didn’t get into any new magazines over this last year, which is strange. I keep wanting to buy a Computer Arts, or a Mac World or something like that, but always end up putting it back on the shelf, as it just feels like a lot more disposable than the price tag requires. The one nice thing that gets imported however is ‘The Guardian’ weekly. This is a digest of all the top stories in the Guardian provided in this A4 stapled format, which is easy to digest on a Saturday morning. It’s definitely something I’m considering buying more often in the future.
I guess I’m not being controversial here when I say I’d like to read a few more books. How I go about this is going to be interesting. Maybe I need to train myself to read at least 10 pages before I go to bed, multiplied over 30 days gives me 300 pages, which is roughly the size of an average novel. Sure some books are larger, but we’re generalizing here. Obviously best laid plans and all of that, but it could become a way of life.
It’s an interesting experiment, and will guarantee at least one book a month minimum.
Today is a slow day. Three days off, I’ve decided I’m not going anywhere today, except maybe to the supermarket (and that I’ll do pretty early today). The rest of the day I’m going to spend reading, writing, drawing, coding, in different bursts.
One of the things that I’ve realised is that I can do certain things in bursts of up to an hour. I have to train myself to be able to actually accomplish something, anything in a hour, because honestly after that initial hour things get a bit stale. On the odd occasion that I’m actually engrossed in what I am doing and moving forward, then obviously I should continue (if of course I can do it), but after that first hour I should just move onto something else and maybe come back to it.
You know that time inbetween creating something and not finishing it, you reflect, ideas keep coming to you and you have this thirst to complete it, because your time is limited on it. You’re feeding the thirst and hopefully that will mean that you’re also more productive in the long run.
Shifting towards something a little more personal, the biggest part of 2010 and the most impactful.
Even with all of the other things going on in my life, the biggest thing to happen to me in 2010 was that I rediscovered my life, and by that I mean I finally found the person I want to share my life with. It wasn’t easy getting here, I’ll tell you that much, and I honestly wasn’t even actively looking for it and it landed in my lap, with a little help from me. The funny thing is that for ages it’s always felt like this was all inevitable, and yet not a day goes by that I’m not thankful that I’ve finally found Yasmine. The even stranger thing about this is that I’ve also completely forgotten how it felt like to be single, where you didn’t have someone that genuinely deeply cared about you in that way (don’t get me wrong, the love from my family and friends in Greece and England is beyond words and questioning, but this is different).
In life you can never have everything, and when I moved over here, I knew that I was giving up a ton of stuff, but crucially I was also getting something that I can never get in England, and that’s family, mine and Yasmine’s. Once again this is a double edged sword but it’s one that I am extremely grateful for and really enjoying at the moment.
I love the fact that I don’t really have to cook, unless I really want to. I like the fact that I am generally taken care of in that department completely and totally. Be it my future mother in law, Yasmine, my aunts, whatever. I like the fact that I don’t have to iron, except on the rare occasions. I love the fact that the country is small and I can get around relatively easily.
I don’t like the banking sector in the country, nor do I like the stupid traffic in Beirut. I don’t like the insane drivers, nor how they force me to act while I drive on the road either. I do like the weather generally, although I do actually wish it would act like the seasons. We really honestly didn’t feel any autumn, nor are we honestly feeling the winter either. I guess this is all part of the global warming effect which I should discuss in more detail in the future.
My moving over to Lebanon and taking a job at PDP from Arup was a major one. So far it’s given me exactly what I expected, although the size of the project and time frame that I was given to complete a project I have been working on, for 4 months of my time here, was certainly unexpected. It’s not been fun and it’s stressed me out in a way I didn’t expect. It wasn’t an issue of getting everything correct or forgetting something, it was an issue of maintaining a good level of work in a very tight timeframe, with junior engineers, while I tried to learn the way in which things were done in this office.
There are a ton of things that I want to institute in the office. Something will take a good long while to get them going, while others will be more immediate to implement. The best thing I learnt while working for any company is the following:
Do it first and then claim ignorance later. It’s not like you’re trying to upset anyone, rather trying to push any company forward is a tough thing that takes persistence and time and effort to change something that many people don’t want to change.
This post is all about the numbers. It’s about being the 1600th post on Broken Kode, the 51st post for the month of December 2010 (which also equals the largest number of posts ever in a single month) and the start of the year of end review for 2010.
I originally wanted to have a single post with everything but honestly this post just got out of hand (clocking at over 2000 words), so I’ll be posting it in parts, with a specific focus in each post. I’ll then do a review post right at the end.
Come the 4th of January the site will have been online for 7 whole years! As 7 is also my lucky number (don’t actually know why I think it is, as I’m sure billions of other people feel the same way, but the number 7 makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside), hopefully it will be a banner year for me.
Having said that 2010 has been an exceptional year for me so far. So before 2010 leaves us forever I thought I’d drop a quick salute and reflect on the year that was before I jump into the year that will be (it’s also been a few years since I did one of these, because frankly this shit takes AGES to compile and is a proper time suck).
Twitter has come to replace that. Honestly my main issue with Twitter is that I’m not feeling much in the way of interaction, at least so far. Maybe I’m going about it the wrong way. I don’t reply and respond to every single tweek and when I do it generally goes unanswered (typically).
So what’s a guy to do? I like the fact that everyone and their dog is on twitter. I hate the fact that I can’t write the length that I want. I can tweet from work, but only via my iPhone (which isn’t a big deal). The thing is the form of communication doesn’t rightly appeal to me.
I guess that’s not completely true, it does on some level, but it’s not my preferred method of online communication. Maybe I just need to embrace things, or maybe I just need to keep building this site up, such that it also becomes a destination of sorts.
Maybe branch out into Twitter a bit more. I tried to do it these last few weeks. It was mildly successful, if you consider getting more people following you as being successful.
The ‘Kode doesn’t have a specific focus. People might come here to get a few interesting links, a few snarky comments, maybe look at some pretty pictures, and maybe download a bit of code or whatever.
For the past few years I’ve really been link blogging with some comments, as that was all that I could bring myself to do. In depth commentary takes time, time away from other things, things which I’m enjoying just as much.
So the task for the 7th year of Broken Kode is maybe to refine the commentary slightly - I still like the haphazard linking. The thing is, can I refine how I present things? What good will that achieve? I guess it ultimately depends on what I am trying to achieve with the blogging. It’s an outlet. By now it’s habit. Blogging is about presenting your ideas and I guess I’m trying not to loose site of that, since it honestly seems everyone else around me has.
There are those people that have not. People like Gruber, Swiss Miss, Kottke, Joen and a few others, but by and large the art of personal blogging isn’t as vibrant as it once was…or is there too much noise out there that I can’t really distinguish between the good, the bad and the ugly?
Personal blogs that are updated with any regularity are a rarity. Don’t worry about me I’ll keep the lights turned on.
Continuing with my year end review, I talked about blogging in general, now I get down to this site in particular and creativity and projects in general.
I keep wanting to update with a lighter version, but I keep coming back to the darker colours and staying put. I know I will probably go for a slightly lighter motif pretty soon. Also I’d like to clean up the code finally as it’s a bit of a mess really. That’ll be the first thing I would like to do in January 2011. The design will pretty much remain the same, the underpinning will get lighter, the colours will change and I’ll probably add more doodles and images to places.
I guess I’m definitely of the mind to continue with the evolution of the site rather than a complete revolution. It works for me and it’s lasted the longest since I launched this site.
Then there was this little drawing, which then got made into a glass painting which I get to look at every day.
I managed to make a few logos, some of which were actually used in the physical world, which again I thought was fantastic to see.
As if all of that wasn’t enough I got to complete my first draft and having been slowly hacking away at the second draft. It’s not as far along as I want it to be, but then again when was it ever going to be? Being this far along is reward enough. At least I’ve not given up on the dream. Given up on the dream, I’ve not worked this much on it ever. I’m waking up every morning and actually moving the process along.
Then finally, out of nowhere, I’ve even started off and created a little new robot character. I know I have a love for these things. It was completely by accident and it was inspired by me wanting to use my iPhone for something other than just consumption. I wanted to use it for creating. I am in the process of drawing a small backlog of pages so that I can start soliciting it on a weekly basis, which should be a nice distraction from all the other stuff that I’ve got going on at the moment.
When put like that, the output doesn’t seem too bad. There are a ton of projects I didn’t get to start, which I put the idea down on paper but never got around to. Ultimately however things actually were completed.
One of the things that I’m going to try and do next year is put rough deadlines. Even if I don’t meet these deadlines, at least I’ll push myself in the general direction of actually doing the work. Yes I might get a bit stressed while I do it, but that’s ok, it means I can look back on the year and be happy for what I completed. Actually completing projects is what keeps me happy. I’m also definitely going to buy this book.
This post is all about the numbers. It’s about being the 1600th post on Broken Kode, the 51st post for the month of December 2010 (which also equals the largest number of posts ever in a single month) and the year of end review for 2010.
Come the 4th of January the site will have been online for 7 whole years! As 7 is also my lucky number (don’t actually know why I think it is, as I’m sure billions of other people feel the same way, but the number 7 makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside), hopefully it will be a banner year for me.
Having said that 2010 has been an exceptional year for me so far. So before 2010 leaves us forever I thought I’d drop a quick salute and reflect on the year that was before I jump into the year that will be (it’s also been a few years since I did one of these, because frankly this shit takes AGES to compile and is a proper time suck).
Twitter has come to replace that. Honestly my main issue with Twitter is that I’m not feeling much in the way of interaction, at least so far. Maybe I’m going about it the wrong way. I don’t reply and respond to every single tweek and when I do it generally goes unanswered (typically).
So what’s a guy to do? I like the fact that everyone and their dog is on twitter. I hate the fact that I can’t write the length that I want. I can tweet from work, but only via my iPhone (which isn’t a big deal). The thing is the form of communication doesn’t rightly appeal to me.
I guess that’s not completely true, it does on some level, but it’s not my preferred method of online communication. Maybe I just need to embrace things, or maybe I just need to keep building this site up, such that it also becomes a destination of sorts.
Maybe branch out into Twitter a bit more. I tried to do it these last few weeks. It was mildly successful, if you consider getting more people following you as being successful.
The ‘Kode doesn’t have a specific focus. People might come here to get a few interesting links, a few snarky comments, maybe look at some pretty pictures, and maybe download a bit of code or whatever.
For the past few years I’ve really been link blogging with some comments, as that was all that I could bring myself to do. In depth commentary takes time, time away from other things, things which I’m enjoying just as much.
So the task for the 7th year of Broken Kode is maybe to refine the commentary slightly - I still like the haphazard linking. The thing is, can I refine how I present things? What good will that achieve? I guess it ultimately depends on what I am trying to achieve with the blogging. It’s an outlet. By now it’s habit. Blogging is about presenting your ideas and I guess I’m trying not to loose site of that, since it honestly seems everyone else around me has.
There are those people that have not. People like Gruber, Swiss Miss, Kottke, Joen and a few others, but by and large the art of personal blogging isn’t as vibrant as it once was…or is there too much noise out there that I can’t really distinguish between the good, the bad and the ugly?
Personal blogs that are updated with any regularity are a rarity. Don’t worry about me I’ll keep the lights turned on.
I keep wanting to update with a lighter version, but I keep coming back to the darker colours and staying put. I know I will probably go for a slightly lighter motif pretty soon. Also I’d like to clean up the code finally as it’s a bit of a mess really. That’ll be the first thing I do in January 2011. The design will pretty much remain the same, the underpinning will get lighter, the colours will change and I’ll probably add more doodles and images to places.
Then there was this little drawing, which then got made into a glass painting which I get to look at every day.
I managed to make a few logos, some of which were actually used in the physical world, which again I thought was fantastic to see.
As if all of that wasn’t enough I got to complete my first draft and having been slowly hacking away at the second draft. It’s not as far along as I want it to be, but then again when was it ever going to be? Being this far along is reward enough. At least I’ve not given up on the dream. Given up on the dream, I’ve not worked this much on it ever. I’m waking up every morning and actually moving the process along.
Then finally, out of nowhere, I’ve even started off and created a little new robot character. I know I have a love for these things. It was completely by accident and it was inspired by me wanting to use my iPhone for something other than just consumption. I wanted to use it for creating. I am in the process of drawing a small backlog of pages so that I can start soliciting it on a weekly basis, which should be a nice distraction from all the other stuff that I’ve got going on at the moment.
When put like that, the output doesn’t seem too bad. There are a ton of projects I didn’t get to start, which I put the idea down on paper but never got around to. Ultimately however things actually were completed.
One of the things that I’m going to try and do next year is put rough deadlines. Even if I don’t meet these deadlines, at least I’ll push myself in the general direction of actually doing the work. Yes I might get a bit stressed while I do it, but that’s ok, it means I can look back on the year and be happy for what I completed. Actually completing projects is what keeps me happy. I’m also definitely going to buy this book.
My moving over to Lebanon and taking a job at PDP from Arup was a major one. So far it’s given me exactly what I expected, although the size of the project and time frame that I was given to complete a project I have been working on, for 4 months of my time here, was certainly unexpected. It’s not been fun and it’s stressed me out in a way I didn’t expect. It wasn’t an issue of getting everything correct or forgetting something, it was an issue of maintaining a good level of work in a very tight timeframe, with junior engineers, while I tried to learn the way in which things were done in this office.
I love the fact that I don’t really have to cook, unless I really want to. I like the fact that I am generally taken care of in that department completely and totally. Be it my future mother in law, Yasmine, my aunts, whatever. I like the fact that I don’t have to iron, except in the rare occasions.
I don’t like the banking sector in the country, nor do I like the stupid traffic in Beirut. I don’t like the insane drivers, nor how they force me to act while I drive on the road either. I do like the weather generally, although I do actually wish it would act like the seasons. We really honestly didn’t feel any autumn, nor are we honestly feeling the winter either. I guess this is all part of the global warming effect which I should discuss in more detail in the future.
There are a ton of things that I want to institute in the office. Something will take a good long while to get them going, while others will be more immediate to implement. The best thing I learnt while working for any company is the following:
Do it first and then claim ignorance later. It’s not like you’re trying to upset anyone, rather trying to push any company forward is a tough thing that takes persistence and time and effort to change something that many people don’t want to change.
Comics and Graphic Novels When it came to comics and graphic novels, this year was a bit mixed. Before I left England, I honestly packed a ton of books with me. This was in addition to the ton of books that I actually still have with me as well.
The countless articles I’ve read online and in the various magazines I’ve bought over the year don’t get counted. The tweets I’ve read and wasted more time on, don’t get counted. That said, I am a bit embarressed to confess that on more than one occasion I would by the Economist (which I honestly believe is one of the best magazines for getting information on what’s going on in the world) and not actually read much of it, past the cover story. I think what I’ll try and do is, once a month try and actually get through an issue of the economist. Every week is a tall order, but once a month should be ok.
I also bought a few issues of Wired. The typical price in Lebanon is 19,000LL, which is approximately $12.5, around 8.5 quid, which is nearly double the cover price. Which is probably why I’m going to try and limit myself to reading this magazine once every couple of months.
I didn’t get into any new magazines over this last year, which is strange. I keep wanting to buy a Computer Arts, or a Mac World or something like that, but always end up putting it back on the shelf, as it just feels like a lot more disposable than the price tag requires. The one nice thing that gets imported however is ‘The Guardian’ weekly. This is a digest of all the top stories in the Guardian provided in this A4 stapled format, which is easy to digest on a Saturday morning. It’s definitely something I’m considering buying more often in the future.
This has easily been the longest post I’ve ever written, clocking out at over 1500 words and it’s taken me the better part of 3 days to write. It’s been nice to finally get my thoughts in one place again, so take that Twitter and your silly 140 character word limit bullshit.
See now that it is weird. Over the years I’ve heard sooo much good stuff about the Comics Reporter. Unfortunately every time I put his RSS feed into Google Reader it just gobbled it up and ignored the formatting. Somehow, while I was exploring my feeds, I actually happened on the real feed, and damn it’s brilliant. He actually links pictures to the birthdays of people and the interviews are full format rather than gobbled garbage. Here’s the link if you guys are having the same problem.
The Indie Mac Gift Pack - I know it feels like a bunch of adds on the site right now, but seriously I’m more interested in how amazing these websites look like. This one is completely different than the previous one, but better in a completely different way. Hover over the monsters…
Fusion Ads Holiday Bundle - Apart from the insanely great bundle, I can’t help but absolutely love the design of this page. Really can draw on soo much inspiration from this page it’s unreal.
So, the first part of this experiment is complete. I’ve basically spent the last 3 weeks blogging solidly on the ‘Kode. It’s been a mixture of links and opinion columns and random thoughts. in that time I’ve not tweeted at all, in fact it’s all been on here. So the next step is to see which of the two platforms garners more attention in general. Obviously on Twitter it’s just going to be that, a whole bunch of links with very little commentary, but lets see if that platform is any good at generating traffic towards this site.
I’m just curious how powerful twitter is and if it has effectively killed blogging as I know it (I believe it has, but I’d like to make sure). So it might be a little quiet over here. If you are looking for the same type of content, then I’d suggest you head on over to @khaledaboualfa for a little bit of the same, although I’m sure I’ll post things on here as well (just no where as near the level of the past 3 weeks).
If you’ve not been to the Google Chrome Webstore, go have a wonder around there and come back. Interesting no? It’s basically a big place to find interesting things on the web that let you do stuff. Some stuff is optimised for the Google Chrome browser, others not so much.
One of the things I’ve found is that whenever you go to a new service there does seem to be the choice of signing in using your google account, which is INCREDIBLY useful and generally a major hurdle already passed to get to use something.
The first thing I’ve installed is the Graphic.ly application. What can I say, I’m a comic geek, so this seemed like the natural thing to do. I still don’t like reading comics on my computer (I’ve ever really done that for one thing, and that’s because it stopped being published in English, and so I was forced to find another method to finish off the story). The interesting thing here isn’t Graphic.ly itself, it’s the fact that I’m trying it in the first place.
The service has been online for like a year or something and this is the first time I’m actually using it. Why? Because it’s there and it was easy. In fact I’m already reading a comic with art by the great Rick Mays, whom I’ve not read anything of any substance since Kabuki Scarab (one of the best mini series you’ve probably never read).
It just kind of proves a point of what the store is meant to be about, slowly but surely letting you discover stuff that was already there, now it’s just a hell of a lot easier to access.
Facebook Visualizing Friendships - AMAZING visualisation of Facebook connections.
The Top Ten Comics of 2010 - by the New York Magazine. Predictably going for the indie market, but I’m impressed that Chew is on there. I’ve not been able to get into Pluto X, it just really doesn’t appeal to me, but it keeps getting rave reviews. The first volume has left me cold, I must admit.
Just been listening to the Sidebar nation, and they have this fasinating interview with El Coro, about the graphic novel he’s created in his spare time, it’s called ‘The Transient Man’ and it’s seriously interesting, seeing as you can read 120 pages of the book online.
Troop 142 - Speaking of online comics, this is by Mike Dawson and is an online graphic novel, that’s just won an Ignatz award. Looks interesting, in an Alex ‘Box Office Poison’ Robinson kind of way..
I’ve been drawing a panel a day of my new comic. It’s going to be an online comic that comes out daily. Currently I’m trying to sort out a backlog so that if I can’t do a panel on a day it’s not the end of the world. This has been incredibly fun to do, as I’m seeing this world being built before my very eyes, in an incredible fast way. Is it as complex as my graphic novel? Of course not, it was never going to be that. This is a fun comic to read in the RSS reader on your way to work.
The special thing about it I guess is that it’s in full colour (or at least the limited pallete I’ve chosen) and was created on the iPhone. The reason I guess I’m doing it on the iPhone is part convenience and part novelty. The convenience is the fact that I can open my phone at any point and just doodle some more on a panel and then get back to whatever I was doing. The reason why this works rather than my using a Wacom pen, is the fact that the artwork is being created right underneath my ‘pen’ rather than infront on a screen. Closest to a digital sketchbook I’ve got, so I’m intrigued to see what opportunities an iPad will provide.
The creative process has been interesting, in so much as I’ve basically not written a script. The script get’s written as I draw. It gets updated and an idea will take another form, and I’ll end up drawing like 5 new panels or something taking the story in a completely different and interesting fun direction.
The thing about it all is that the world and the characters are becoming real very quickly. As with anything the more you do it the better you get at it, and it’s also interesting seeing how the look of the characters is evolving as I get more proficient at drawing them, with my current tools. There is a slow but constant evolution to the characters, which I’ve found to be very rewarding.
2 weeks ago I didn’t have anything, now I am looking at about two week’s worth of comics and several sketches and images of the various characters. The thing about this endevour is that once I hit play, I need to make sure that I create this thing in a timely fashion. I hit my daily deadline and if I don’t I have to make it up over the weekend. That gives me a two day buffer. I don’t want to share anything at the moment, but once I’ve got a month’s worth of stuff, I’ll be sure to start sharing and hoping you’ll share the love by telling others around you.
Feeling drained after that long trip to Syria yesterday (and back). It’s the first week where I don’t have a deadline at the end of Friday. I have to issue something minor, but by and large it’s not that tough a week. Thank fuck. It’s been pretty damn intense these last few weeks/months, but we’ve come through, and people are relatively happy with what we did.
There are elements that we could do further, edit, change etc, but ultimately we’ve done a pretty solid job for the 3 months work we’ve completed. Now I’ve got to haul my ass out of bed and take a shower and get outta here. Can I be bothered? Can I fuck.
Just got back from Syria for a day meeting. Apart from the long trip and the limited food (they never feed us at these meetings, which is FUCKING annoying), one of the most striking things about this meeting, is the number of languages on the table. Five of them. German, English, Arabic, Russian and Turkish.
Seriously, I have been in soo many meeting over my time, but never anything quiet like this. I’ll have some more thoughts on Syria in a minute, this being my second time, and me basically having an understanding of what to expect from the place.
TeuxDeux - To do lists are one of those things that every person does in a different way. What’s funny in my mind is that there definitely seems to be a trend of white and red apps designed in a certain way, <a href"calvetica.com">Calvetica is another solid example. Strange that they’re created by two completely different parties, although the Calvetica app is slightly more polished I feel.
The Web Designer’s Guide to iOS Apps - This should be an interesting read. Not heard much from anyone about this, but I’m sorting out my wishlist, so this is definitely on there.
For all those wondering what the hell is going on the ‘Kode and this larger (than normal) number of posts in such a short time, it’s basically an experiment I’m going through for the month of December. Today was a bit of an off day, on account of me being out of the country so to speak and not having the time.
Ultimately my goal is to post about 3-4 posts a day and try and break my all time record of 51 posts in a single month. Yeah I know, it’s not quantity, it’s quality, well I’m striving for both. I’m striving for something fun and random, where the signal to noise ratio is decent.
I guess the reasons is because I’m actually enjoying blogging again. Not this limited 140 character BULLSHIT. Sorry but twitter has killed off any meaningful communication on the web as I used to once know it. There are some great sites out there, but by and large there is too much short spurts of noise. I was happy to acknowledge twitter killing the blog comments. You can see it all over, but what I am generally opposed to is the lack of creativity in people’s posts. It’s like all their energy has been devoted to something less meaningful.
I don’t care people communicating in the way they way, it’s just such a shame that it’s nearly killed the way that I used to like reading. So this is my attempt to rekindle the act of blogging for the sake of blogging. Putting an idea forward, and DEVELOPING it in more detail. There is limit in these things (at least for me) and I’ve spoken about this before. 4 paragraphs or thereabouts is about the correct size.
So join me on this journey to reclaiming the blogosphere. Cluster Fuck, Twitter Fuck.
Art by Illustration Master Adam Hughes - It’s not a secret what a huge Adam Hughes fan I actually am, of both his art and his very rare writing as well. This overview is an excellent place to start appreciating his work. Now to blow your mind, Adam uses a mouse and photoshop to do all the colouring. Seriously, not a pen, a mouse.
The 3 Million Dollars Franchise - That’s how much money the Batman franchise created in comic book sales for the month of November. There are obviously a ton of variables to consider, but that comic book industry is going down the toilet, my god what a joke. It’s not that sales are down people, it’s just that the sales are more spread out. Publish 1 Batman book a month and see if sales don’t top 500,000 for each copy. Hell even I’d buy it, considering i’ve not bought any pamphlets in like 9 years or something like that.
Google Chrome Ad - Fun ad, but I still believe it going to mainly appeal to the enterprise user and not people like me…even if I am a Google fan.
James Jean’s Mirada Logo - It’s been a while since I’ve linked to anything from James Jean. He’s still one of my favourite artists in the world, even though he doesn’t do comic book art any more. This is interesting in that is looks NOTHING like a logo. It’s this incredibly detailed illustration, that the company Mirada is using. Not sure how it scales, but it’s a lovely drawing.
Damn you Travis Charest, and your unbelievable skill. I swear, every single time this guy shows something he’s worked on, I just get depressed for like a few hours. Something about his work just evokes magic.
The following is something I wrote a whole year ago, but I never completed and never published. I’ve taken tweaked a few words here and there, but by and large it remains untouched. I still feel the exact same way a year on. It’s insane how much of an impact that documentary made on me. If you’ve not had a chance to look at it, I highly recommend it.
I’m talking of course about new year’s resolutions. In this regard I’m not different than most people. A year is a long time. Life always throws new things in your general direction over the course of the year with amazing regularity. We’re human beings and so we get bored, we get excited by the new.
After watching Objectified, I definitely look at things I buy with a lot more care. I want to see the love put into everything that I buy. I want things with soul. I don’t want shit cluttering up my life. As such that was a life time resolution. It comes with some difficulty, due in part to the fact that I can’t compromise, which is harder, but this is a resolution I’ve decided to keep. If it’s not necessary and doesn’t get used, what’s the point in having it.
These are resolutions to keep for a lifetime. They are a way of life. However it’s always nice to have smaller more mangeable goals to try and achieve in the meantime.
Well, clearly the country just bypassed the whole autumn thing and just instantly went to winter. The temperature is still on the high side, but at least it is chucking it down. The thing is that in Lebanon when it rains, lets just say, it’s definitely not fucking around. We are talking buckets, we are talking Noah type rain here.
My only issue, and it’s a small tiny one is the noise that comes from my neighbour’s buildings and the piss poor job they do of securing their shit. The wind is a howler and it’s not forgiving in the slightest.
Been thinking about this for a while now. When Facebook first came about, I loved everything about it. As time has gone by however I have been moving slowly away from the service. I’ve noticed this trend with other people as well. It’s one of those things where a lot of the shine has gone from the service and now you’re bombarded with utter crap in the news feed, about farmville and other shitty game applications.
The thing is though, that FB still provides these words with a decent viewership, ie all of my closer friends that have made it into my circle of friends on Facebook, as well as the like 40 people that read this blog regularly.
Which in a round about way kind of brings us to that thing that used to be an integral part of every blog, the comments.
The annoying thing? Some of the comments about these posts remain on FB and not on this site. I guess the nice thing is that you have a series of places to share communications with, rather than a single location, but alas I am a nostalgia freak. I like what is old, and normally go back to the old on occasion to drink from that well.
Communication is now scattered. It’s all over the place, because there are a million and one places that are vying for our attention. While that is good in general for people to have options to find the thing that they like the most, it’s also makes things a lot more … spread out.
It’s not that I like living in the past, but I like to relive times that were generally fun. The time where blog comments were common place and people interacted with more than 140 characters is long gone. There are specific havens on the net where this continues, but as a blogging community that has left us I believe.
One of the reasons that I’ve had less time to spend on the net. I spend a few minutes here, and hour there, but ultimately I no longer live on the net like I used to. I tend to spend a lot of free time drawing (which is great) and I end up trying to relax from the day I’ve had.
You choose your battlegrounds, you choose your poison. I am not 100% into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Was never really into Delicious or Flickr. Don’t really like Tumblr all that much either.
I know that’s where all the kids are these days, but I feel that I am happy with this unique little part of cyberspace. It’s all mine, I control it’s destiny, it’s in my hands to build it or break it or change it. It’s not a competition, it’s a manner of expression, and after all that’s why we’re all here right?
Or is that me? Listen to the latest ‘The Talk Show’ podcast with Dan Benjamin and honestly a couple of times Gruber just came off like a total dick to Benjamin. I’m not even talking about what he was saying and whether or not you agree with his analysis on tech topics (which is a completely different issue).
While on the subject of Five Simple Steps, I am really enjoying the creation of these web design book boutiques. Notably obviously the Five Simple Steps boutique and the a book apart boutique as well. Books that I am looking to buy at some point are:
The Google WebStore - Also part of the PLETHORA of updates and launches or semi launches that Google has been releasing these last few days. I’ve not really had a chance to play around with any of this, but as Gruber pointed out, what’s with them apeing the iTunes store? I know Google is better than that. Hopefully it’ll evolve to something a bit more than that.
🏎️ Lotuses - Oh dear. That is absolutely the worst thing that could happen to F1. Surely Bernie should get in there and sort this shit out right? I mean seriously, 4 cars on the grid, both with the Lotus branding and both gold and black, both powered by Renault engines. This is a joke right? I think someone should kick Dany Bahar in the head because he’s clearly being a dick about this whole situation. He clearly doesn’t have the rights to using Lotus in F1 so why is he trying to shoehorn it in there? ‘We’re Lotus and we’re back’, what a TOTAL douche bag.
ROUNDEYE: For Love by Tony Harris - Now this is interesting. Tony Harris (fucking great artist) is deciding to do his next project in another way, the kickstarter route. It’ll be interesting if he actually get there. My only suggestion would be that he could include some additional donation levels, like maybe $50 or $100 donation to get a copy of the book with a signed bookplate (have a look at the ones done at Gosh Comics) or something limited that’s not as time consuming as a personalised sketch. I don’t care for my name in the back, and don’t want to pay $200.
The Network Computer - Excellent article on GigaOm about the Network Computer. Kinda reminds me of a stripped down article you’d get on Wired or something, but still a very good read.
Times 100 Best inventions of 2010 - I always love this time of year as we start looking at things in review. It’s been at least a couple of years since I’ve written one of my mammoth years in review posts, so this will definitely get me in the mood. Also, ugliest URL I have seen in a good long while. The damn thing means nothing. I thought we were past that. Shame on you Times magazine.
Comic Book Travel Posters - Stunning designs by Justin Van Genderen. You can also buy all 5 over at imagekind (via Robot 6).
Google’s unbranded notebook, the Cr-48 (someone please tell me what that actually stands for, apart from a strange abbreviation for Chrome) for their Chrome OS operating system (yeah I know what I did just there), is actually a very slick looking thing. It’s interesting because they honestly have taken their visual cue’s from Apple. Strip the thing to the very basics, regarding the looks.
If this was available years ago before I made the jump from PC/Linux to the Mac, maybe I would have tried this out first, alas it’s too late I think as the next computing device I get will probably be an iPad.
I love the concept behind this but I think Google will find it difficult to find traction with the kind of end user that I am. By that I mean the mac-o-phile who has invested himself in all things Apple and have sorted myself out in both my home computing and general mobile computing. Hell even a Windows guy will probably not jump ship just yet. There is definitely a market for this kind of thing, it’s just that I don’t fall into that market, and I presume neither do those with an iPad, an iPhone or other smart device and a decent laptop setup. Everyone else is pretty fair game, and I suspect that’s a large number.
That said, I couldn’t help but love the box it’s all meant to come in…like a kid that enjoys the box more than the actual toy itself. Wonder who drew those doodles on the box?
Seriously easy. I was listening to the Jesse Thorn interview by Dan Benjamin today in the car, and they came to a point where they were talking about how difficult it is to get podcasts onto your phone to consume in the car. Erm what the fuck? People actually have an issue with this?
Seriously, three steps:
That’s it. I mean seriously. If only downloading audiobooks was as easy as this, I’d have a ton on my iPhone. At one point I must have had something like 1GB of podcasts alone. They’ve been keeping me warm on those hour long commutes to work every day (sometimes abit more depending on weather and traffic, sometimes less depending on public holidays that the company doesn’t consider).
I’ve not watched a chick flick for a really, really long time. And the movie ‘Eat Pray Love’ basically reminded me WHY, I’ve not seen a chick flick in a while. This movie sucked so much ass it’s unreal. There were only two redeeming factors to this entire movie. The first were the scenes of the food in Italy and then the views in Bali. Everything else was PURE garbage.
The introspective dialogue was garbage. The fucking characters were the complete opposite of likable; you just wanted to punch Julia Roberts in the mouth for being so bloody annoying. Franco’s floppy hair was annoying. That dude from Texas, in India (whom she learns from) was annoying, and his stupid nickname.
A classic example of how to NOT make a movie. Seriously,
The telling point in how much we didn’t like the movie is when I picked up my phone and started sketching and Yasmine picked up her laptop and started doing stuff for the wedding.
So if you’re looking for a way to literally KILL a few hours, then watch this movie, it’s 2 hours you’ll honestly never get back…I need to go kick a cat (don’t worry I wouldn’t do that, they’re too fast for me) or something to calm down, maybe watch a Tarantino movie or something.
(And yeah it does feel good trashing a really bad movie, you should try it some time, good for the skin and pores).
On the Nexus S website design - I noticed that about the url as well. I thought I was the only one that thought that was weird….clearly there is a pattern for geeky people (via daring fireball).
Busy couple of days for Google. I didn’t see any of it coming and it’s Google’s fault.
Well, that’s not completely true, as I was kinda expecting the Nexus S and Gingerbread around about now, but all the rest of the stuff doesn’t feel as well structured. I’ll explain what I mean by drawing that analogy that everyone and their dog has been drawing for like a few years now.
With Apple we now have a pattern as to when they typically present their latest products. It’s a pattern that has developed over the last few years, there have been some alterations, but typically Apple has been pretty consistent.
In any case there is a pattern that any Mac boy can tell you pretty quickly. With Google, it just all seems less formal. Don’t get me wrong, I love Google. Until the very day that I decided to get my iPhone I was contemplating getting an HTC Desire (one of the reasons could easily be for something like this - I sooooo want cached Google maps.).
It’s a different philosophy at play here. Apple feels organised in every step they make. Google on the other hand feels like the important thing is to get the basics out there (even if no product is shipped). Just the information in an unusable format and then build anticipation and excitement and sometimes animosity, until you finally ship the product, even in a slightly unpolished way.
It happed with Android and it’s happened with Chrome OS.
I’m not saying which is better, because I generally like both companies and what they do, it’s just interesting to see how their philosophies while may have started pretty close to each other have no definitely moved apart as they battle for supremacy in the mobile market.
For those wondering, watch www.youtube.com/googlechrome later on today for when Google releases information about their browser operating system and the machine’s they’ll run on…. 1 year after they officially announced this. How much changes in a year eh?
Google eBooks - The other Google news. Can’t get excited about this, because it’s only available in the US, which is why I can’t get excited about something like Google Voice either. It’s annoying, because I WANT to get excited about this stuff, but I can’t…that and I don’t own an ebook reader (and no an iphone is not a book reader, you’re starting to remind me of those twats on Mac|Life who snuggle up to watch a movie on their fucking iPhones), it’s just silly. I can’t read it on my computer because I’m not used to that action. I am considering a Kindle because of the low price point and the form factor, but still waiting for the next generation of iPad, maybe a third generation or something would be good.
Kobayashi and Vettel star at Awards - Love it. Kobayashi wins the rookie of the year award. To be fair he really does deserve it, even if I am all about the Williams rookies. Kobayashi was the first driver that Yasmine looked up and took notice of. It was during Suzuka, when he was overtaking everyone left right and centre.
Nexus S - The new Android phone from Google. Not that it matter to me as I’m set with my iPhone for the next 3 years I would imagine. The thing is it’s always interesting to see what Google is up to because they’re the only real competition to the iPhone, and if they get better then you know Apple will need to up their game. Currently I think it’s all about the software, and iOS does a ton of stuff well, but needs a ton of stuff to make it better.
What do I think of the industrial design of the S? I personally don’t like it. I loved the Nexus One (and the Desire). HTC have something that Samsung really don’t. Samsung always have this really plasticy feel to their stuff, from their TVs to this high end smart phone. Plasticy.
Thank god it rained. You know that feeling that lingers in the air for a few hours before it rains? Well that feeling has honestly lingered in Lebanon for like the last few MONTHS. No joke. Yesterday was the 5th of December and it was a sunny 29 degrees outside, out in a t-shirt.
Today is a cool 18 degrees, with the rain gods having heard the cries coming from everyone in the country wishing for some rain to wash away the dirt that has just clung since the start of summer.
Also, hopefully the fucking bats will stop shitting on my car. Seriously this has been a problem for me. We’ve got a couple of palm trees across the way in the car park at my grandmother’s house and those fucking bats just kept pooping all over as they circled around every day. According to my grandmother they basically go away the second the first rain comes, so here’s hoping that’s been sorted out.
I used to like Batman, now that I know what bats actually do all night, I don’t have the same affinity to the creature I thought I once did.
Where the fuck do I start? Seriously it’s such a primitive thing, but people over here still smoke EVERYWHERE. Lebanon is generally backwards from the rest of the world in several ways…I will be going into detail of these things in a series of posts. Some of these things are bloody annoying, some are endearing, while others feel amazing. When confronted with the bloody annoying aspects you can’t help but lament the fact of how far the country needs before it’s considered civilised in many respects.
One of these respects is smoking etiquette. Basically as far as I’m concerned I could give a shit about your health or lungs - if you don’t care, why the hell should I? What I do care about is respecting someone’s choice. Much in the same way you made your choice to smoke, I made my choice to NOT smoke and therefore don’t need you disgusting cancer stick puffed in my face, all over my clothes and into my lungs. My lungs are nice and pink (or whatever colour lungs are meant to generally be), while your are this browny, gooey, gunky black colour, you know the kind that’s left on the over after you’ve fried some food in batter or maybe an aubergine on the hob or something of that nature.
In the office, the smokers have decided to take over the kitchen at regular intervals and puff away. Some are considerate and don’t do it unless everyone in the room hasn’t got a problem. Others just do it as if it’s their god given right. I make it clear that I can’t be dealing with that shit, but smokers are addicts. They don’t care too much about what’s going on around them…well most of them don’t.
It’s strange buy I saw these two fat ladies in the bank on Saturday, indoors puffing away. I was struck at how wrong that scene actually was and how far back with regards to smoking Lebanon actually is. It’s a culture of ‘I don’t care about anything or anyone but myself’ which is honestly in direct contrast to the Japanese who put your space and your rights at the highest of levels - the irony of course is that they also smoke like motherfuckers, the difference is that they do it in a way that is honestly very considerate to those around them.
Threadless T-shirts for $9 - Never bought anything from Threadless, but I am all over this offer.
That is pretty strange. I just was looking at the traffic logs on the site and I noticed a really really strange trend. At the start of the year I was seriously moving back up in terms of traffic. June was an epic month but I think that’s mainly attributed to the fact that I had a spreadsheet hosted here for the world cup and that generated a ton of traffic from Google.
But after that month there is this unbelievable drop of nearly 1/5 of the visitors. I mean even the months before this epic month were not as low as that. Did I change anything between the two months? Well for a start there was a less posting on the site? The ‘Kode is not like other sites where I basically post 3 or 4 times a day and have a super specific niche. The site is a personal blog that talks about all sorts of random pop culture items.
There is a ton of those on the web nowadays, but the question is finding which ones have got a unique voice, and that’s actually incredibly difficult to do. I neither have the time, nor do I feel like I am part of a community of people any more. Blog comments don’t exist any more, or no one really uses them as much as they used.
I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, and I don’t mind the smaller readership, it’s kind of fun to be honest, because I can go back to being as foul mouthed as I want without having to worry about anyone taking offence (or maybe less so than I would normally), it’s just what the hell happened in July to drive EVERYONE away :).
The plan is, and lets see if I can keep this up, is to give at least 2 posts a day. Sometimes they will be links, other times it will be longer based posts on things that i enjoy or am going through, lets see if I can keep this up.brok
iPad Sketch Elements AI - If I used Illustrator and made iPhone or iPad mockups, this would definitely be something i would use…unfortunately I do neither, at the moment.
I thought this was interesting. Just surfing away happily, writing support request emails on the habari mailing list (trying to sort things out - Colin has been great in helping things get sorted out on the site), but I noticed this little icon in the already minimal Chrome toolbar. After I clicked on it I realised it was telling me about an update and that I needed to restart the browser. How excellent is that. The Chrome team really are paying a lot of attention to the detail for their browser which is excellent.
Tom Tom - Go download the excellent new Smashing Pumpkins song, seriously, it’s one of the good ones.
Reeder - I’ve used this for all of 4 minutes and already it’s provided me with a better rss feed reader experience than the exceptional google reader. Maybe because now my iPhone and my Mac have brown paper like reader apps, with slick animations? Either way, for a beta, I really like this.
Update: Turns out it was called ‘The Fellowship’ and not the Following. Oops. Still an amazing song.
Okay, I told you guys to go download Tom Tom, but what you should be waiting for, which I guess is the next song to come out from this second album by the pumpkins is actually called ‘The Following’. I am 15 years old again and I finally remember why I’m a complete Smashing Pumpkins nut, and why Billy Corgan can still pull every bone in my body that craves new music apart. This song is up there with ‘Eye’ which originally came out on the ‘Lost Highways’ soundtrack, a CD I bought just for that song, and subsequently basically listned non-stop for many years.
I heard it on the radio (internet) of all places, but seriously, I nearly cried I was soo bloody happy.
Murderbullets - Ok, I hate James Stokoe because I love him so much, or maybe I hate him because I love his art. Murderbullets is a 100 page prologue to a book while working on something else, he decided to stop and work on something else. I mean WTF? That’s like completely insane right? No, the page he’s drawn and is sharing on his site is COMPLETELY insane.
After a long while being dormant, this site is finally going to get a bit more action. I guess part of the reason is because I’m getting angry with things again, and a blog is an EXCELLENT medium to vent that anger. Also I suppose I miss the ACT of writing. I used to write a hell of a lot every day, and then all of a sudden it became a chore.
I guess that’s never a good thing and you should only ever do something if your heart is in it, otherwise it will not matter. Not to yourself, and definitely not to anyone around you, and even less to people on the internet.
Is there going to be a focus or a shift in the content being published on this site? Never. It’ll be as random as ever, but hopefully I’ll rant a bit more. Also I’m going to be installing an update to the site design. It’ll be an alternative colour and hopefully will have some more doodles and sketches on here, because well I’m actually creating these more and more nowadays.
Kapow Comic Con - All I am going to say is that Mark Millar, you’re an ass. You couldn’t have sorted this out in the 12 years I was living in the UK, 8 of which were in the London. No, you had to sort this out after i decided to take a break from London. Thank you Mark, for nothing.
One of the things that I’m testing right now is to make sure that this post via email actually works. For the most part it works (although the timing is less than instant, which is annoying - but a minor issue). What’s actually more annoying however is the fact that markdown doesn’t work. For all those in the dark, Markdown is a nice little plugin/code or whatever developed by John Gruber (the Oprah for Macs). I’ve always wanted something like this, but ultimately the implementation on various blogging platforms WordPress was always shitty.
Now with a new shiney Habari plugin, I’m hoping that it all actually works correctly. So this is basically a test to see if I use normal text formatting in gmail will resolve some of the problems I’ve had with markdown actually working via email. So rather than annoying you with the test, I’ll also put a list of things that I would like implemented on the iPhone:
Okay, lets see if the above works or not.
If you are still on the fence with regards to the Osamu Tezuka book I wrote about before, go read this excellent review on Comiscomics by Dash Shaw , it worked for me (seriously his name is Dash, love it).
Turns out I was wrong about the Humanoids books. Reason I can’t buy it, is because they’ve not distributed it out yet. Straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak.
Diamond clearly doesn’t have their information right.
Just bought this great book called: The Art of Osamu Tezuka. Apart from a great hardcover book with good production values, you’ll also get a great DVD (The secrets of creation) on there with a documentary showing you what the man went through to create his art. It’s a great package for a reasonable price and definitely should be in any sequential arts fan’s library.
Amazon.co.uk link and the Amazon.com link
While it’s been pretty quiet over here on the site, it’s mainly because life has gotten in the way. This includes work, finding a house to buy, sorting out a wedding and a few public holidays with family obligations have all had their toll on my time.
One thing that has happened in the last couple of days however is the fact that I’ve finally started using my iPhone for something other than consuming data and information. It’s now become something I am creating art on….I know. I basically bought Brushes, which after testing out Sketch Pro and Adobe’s Ideas is by far the single best art creating software app in the app store. Simply because of the work follow process and the fact that the creators seem to understand how someone using the iPhone would go about creating art.
One of the things that I absolutely love is the fact that in contrast to something like Photoshop the toolset is limited (as you would expect) but having less things to think about, actually means that by limiting yourself you become more inventive with how you show things, you stop depending on the software and trying to solve a problem by thinking. One thing I’m thinking is stuff life layer effects. Apart from transparency there isn’t much more you can do. You can merge layers down and rearranging them, and that’s about it. The limitation increases the boundaries.
My current tool of choice is the Pogo Sketch Stylus. It’s a tiny little thing, beautifully designed, although I’m honestly all that sure about the nib. I know, the most important part right? Well the nib on this is a fluffy spongy ball, which is pretty responsive. As I’ve not seen or tried any alternative I have no idea which one works better. I would have imagined that a hard rubber tip to be better for this sort of thing, but without a sample from somewhere I can’t tell. I might ask someone to lend me an old Stylus (hopefully something that’s a little meatier than the traditional thin metal strips that came with most Palm handhelds.
Speaking of limitations, I think the size of the actual phone means that feature creep will be limited, but hopefully they will provide additional features. Personally I would welcome the following features:
One thing I hadn’t realized was that there is a Mac viewer which provides to things. The first is a much higher resolution of the drawing you’re working on and also a video with all of your steps as you created the drawing, which I think is really great fun to see the process in front of you.
Since I bought this app, it is by far my most used one on my phone. The blog is pretty quiet at the moment (they’ve not posted anything since August) which is a shame as I’m sure there is a ton of stuff that people have been creating since then.
How many images have I created so far? So far it’s 5. I’m aiming for a minimum of 1 a day. I don’t think it’s too difficult as some of these images I’m able to create pretty quickly. There is a purpose to all of this. It has nothing to do with my main graphic novel, which has been coming along slowly but surely. It’s great to see the pages slowly taking form, but this is a side project that provides me with a great deal of liberation and pretty quick gratification of creating a character, then another, then a world that they live in, all within a week.
Watch this space as I will be talking about this a lot more in the coming weeks and months – I honestly have a good feeling about this.
So yesterday I made to purchases. The first was the Pogo Sketch stylus. The second was Brushes. The obvious reasoning is to start making a comic on my iPhone. I know probably not the best medium for this thing. Maybe getting an iPad for that sort of thing would be better, but I’m not getting a first gen iPad (that’s another post for another time).
I’ve actually have several drawing applications on my iPhone, but I’ve found that Brushes is the best for actually creating, even if the icon sucks many many balls. Adobe Ideas doesn’t provide you with enough options for the brushes (you have one), and Sketch Pro (from Autodesk) I found to be incredibly annoying with it’s unresponsive zooming in and out. This is a major issue on a small screen as you’ll be doing that a lot to get the finer details. Also the layer system on Brushes just works nicely and five layers should be about enough to deal with things.
All of this is my attempt to create a daily comic from my iPhone. I’m going to try and build a few weeks worth of material (don’t even know what I’m going to be drawing at the moment) but hopefully it’ll be fun while I continue to toil away at my other comic book work (on the 7th page of my second draft, slowly but surely people, slowly but surely).
This is what I don’t get, the new revitalised Humanoids publishing looks like they’ve FINALLY understood how their content should be presented. After years of them publishing it in various format that just don’t do the material justice trying to infiltrate the American market they’ve finally understood something…come closer.
The people buying books like ‘The Metabaron’ and ‘The Incal’ are not your teenager - those are looking at Naruto, Bleach, DeathNote, maybe the Mark Millar stable of books. The people that are interested in Moebius and Jodo are people who have cash, are of a slightly older demographic and appreciate comics as art, no matter how long that damn thing takes to make.
Which is good that they’ve understood that, so they’ve created these absolutely GORGEOUS hardcovers for their material. I am talking IDW level production values, and nice price tag to accompany this. These things look absolutely amazing. Have a look:
So what’s the problem? You can’t buy the bloody books anywhere, that’s what’s the problem. I’ve checked the following places to order the Incal in particular (although I’m hoping that they create a Metabarons version of this as well).
None of these guys have it in stock or even in their catalogue. Not one of them. So how the hell are you supposed to buy the damn book? So far I’ve only been able to find one place I can buy the book from, and that’s forbiddenplanet - and even then it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a sure thing. Seriously Humanoids, you’ve tried this several times before and failed. Finally you’ve got your product in the correct format that it will appeal to your demographic and you fuck it up by not getting it out there….sort it out people!!!!
So I’m looking for an iPhone stand, and I happen upon this little thing, the iAngle. Clicking around to see how it actually works, I came onto the little quote from Mac|Life magazine:
Who the fuck does that? Vegges out to a movie on their iPhone…seriously. I can imagine you watching a few clips or whatever on the move…what a bunch of idiots.
Still haven’t found my idea iPhone stand btw.
So I’ve finally linked my bluetooth keyboard to my Iphone. So much fun having this little thing connected. I know, fucking late to the game, but you know what, I definitely don’t follow the Apple release schedule (if I’m going to buy an Apple product, I’ll wait for the 3rd if not 4th release of the product, all the rubbish has been sorted out by then).
Today I actually sorted out a bunch of things in the house, went and saw my aunt, went to my favourite coffee place in Saida (where I froze my bollocks off, because they’re soooo stupid that they have to blast the AC at like 17 degrees directly above your head - basically terrible mechanical services design)….but I was able to break from the page that I was stuck on for the second draft.
You know the deal. You spend like 2 weeks looking at a page and do a bunch of trial pages and it’s not coming together. You step back, spend a bit of time doing other things and then the page just falls in place within like 5 minutes.
2 pages of Draft 1 (D1), have been converted to 6 pages in Draft 2 (D2). This bodes well for the final page count in Book 1, which currently is about 60-80 odd pages, so the final count I think will be in excess of 120 pages.
Right now to work on those two pages in a more finalized way and get read for the Formula 1. Sooo excited.
So now that the plugins are working on the site, I’ve been able to get the archives plugin working, in the new Archives page. Still needs a lot of work to unify that look, but it’s nice to see all my posts over the years in one place. Definitely a slow down in the last year or so.
So I upgraded to the latest and greatest version of Habari. The main reason for this is so that I can start using the plethora of new plugins that work with the new version, including the post by email plugin.
Posting via email is probably the best way for me to continue updating my site on a regular basis even if it is short bursts of consciousness. It’s all part of the ongoing evolution of the site which for a while was all about the links from other sites. Now it’s back to me with the odd link if I feel like it.
Can you believe it’s been a year since I created the design on this site and it is still going strong? Usually I get bored soooooo much faster and just change everything.
Well that was not what I wanted to happen. Three posts made their way into the RSS feed that were not meant to be posts since they were emails….
Thankfully they are not that bad and hopefully we won’t be seeing that sort of thing again.
Back to our regularly scheduled programme….
Well I just upgraded to the latest Habari developer preview release. This thing has been a long time coming. I’ve not played around with it too much, but it does feel much snappier. Upgrading has been a pretty damn easy process, and the way I’ve set it up, all future upgrades will be just as easy as well - using SSH.
I’m going to be posting a whole bunch of stuff about this, because I really think it’s good for people that are complete n00bs (like myself) to get stuck into this, as it’ll make the general process so much less time consuming.
This weekend is the season finale of one of the most excellent formula one seasons in a great long while. I’m not going to say ever, because I thoroughly enjoyed 2005 which was the last time Williams were competitive and the 2008 season (with the whole Alonso/Hamilton rivalry and the whole last lap to decide the championship thing was also pretty cool).
So basically it all comes down to this weekend, this one race and really 3 drivers (although Hamilton does have a mathematical chance of winning, somehow it doesn’t seem really likely, but harsher things have happened in the past – ie his victory 2 years ago over Massa comes to mind).
So who do I want to win this thing? I’ll say it now, definitely not Alonso. While I think the guy is a phenomenal driver and really does squeeze things out of his car that his teammates can’t, I don’t like his attitude. It something about the way he handles himself, as if this is his right to be the champion, as if it is so bloody unfair that he doesn’t win every single race. He just lacks a certain amount of humility.
On the far end of that is Sebastian Vettel, whom I rate and like a great deal, ever since his debut with BMW Sauber a few years ago as a replacement to the then injured Robert Kubica (following his crash in Canada) he just looks like he LOVES being there.
The thing about this particular season however is that he’s basically been up against Mark Webber. When Webber came to Williams years ago there was this excitement going because I really rated him. This year he’s proved what he can do when given the right machinery. The issue here is that while Red Bull seem to have given him the equipment they’ve not given him the moral support he needs, or at least it’s clear to everyone whom Red Bull would rather see win this championship…which is really strange.
Mark has been with Red Bull and Jaguar before that for a while, so he’s a loyal guy and generally and affable kinda guy. He’s not big headed, he’s a bit gruff in an Australian sort of way, but he just seems like the sort of guy that gets on with things generally – but will fight for his rights if he thinks people have overstepped their bounds. He’s a consummate professional, and he’s coming to the end of his F1 career.
The thing is I know that Vettel is going to have many many years ahead of him where he can be challenging for the title, I feel that this is Webber’s last chance and he’s done well through it all to get here. Vettel doesn’t need to help him, and Alonso isn’t going to help him, but it would be nice to see an outsider claim it (I know last year’s Brawn was an outsider, but that’s different due to the changes in the regulations and the driver lineups were not as strong as this years).
Either way, this proves to be a facinating race at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi.
Broken Kode, there’s an app for that - not really, it doesn’t exist but if you like having websites as icons on your Iphone (you known by making a bookmark in mobile safari and then saving it to your homepage), the ‘Kode now has a customised icon just for that.
The way to do it is pretty simple, here’s a couple of links to help you with the “technical bits”, templates you might want to use and how to hide the address bar in mobile safari to show more of the site straight away:
JS1k - 1k Javascript demo contest. Truly awe-inspiring what can be done with 1k of code…unbelievables (Tetris with 1k!!!)
Typomaps - Incredibly beautiful posters. Love the attention to detail and the colours chosen. This shall be mine and on one of my walls.
Just to let everyone know, I can now be found firing shots (pretty shortly) on Dribbble. (Thanks to Chris for hooking me up with an invite).
The creative process for Aitus Moralis is in full swing at the moment. I started work on the second draft a few weeks ago, and so far I’m on my fourth page of the second draft, from now on going to be referred to as SD2. It’s an amazing feeling to actually be starting this process which has been a great long time coming.
What makes me smile is how the pages are starting to evolve. In SD2, the scribbled page has expanded to 4 pages. There’s a great deal more detail, but at the same time there’s not a lot of detail. I don’t need to get everything perfect, I just need to get the right idea. I need to get the correct method of doing things.
The act of blogging on a daily basis, seriously seems like it was centuries ago, when only a few years ago I would have been doing this nearly every day a couple of times. The amount of words that I typed over the years now that I sit down and consider everything is a lot (others did a hell of a lot more, but then again others made it their business to do this). I’d talk and discuss just about everything that was on my mind, in detail. Reams of consciousness would come out on a daily basis for people to digest, and there were many people at the time digesting it all. Now it’s very quiet over here. Part of me actually likes this quiet, and another part remembers the good old days when blogs reigned supreme. I guess now it’s all about the 140 characters or the facebook updates or the plethora of other ways that people communicate online. Also I don’t spend enough time tweaking the site, but that’s only because I’m actually happy with the overall look. The pages are clear (it’s taken me this long to get to this stage) and I finally have a mini portfolio section that I can point people towards. It’s not innovative in any way. Hell it’s not even particular exciting, but it’s clean and it’s minimal and it does it’s job to convey the information well. I would argue that it needs three more sets of colours to signify the changing of the seasons (which I very well might actually do). The thing is that a site is only relevant if you actually continually update with current issues. From a promotional point of view I don’t do that any more. I hardly go online to other blogs, I don’t reply to many tweets. I don’t find things I’m interested in and go for it. The main reason? I guess it’s because I did that for years…not months, years. And now, I don’t really care about that stuff. I finally have what I want in terms of an online presence, one that I am happy with. I’ve tried over the years to give something back to people that gave me something and gave a great deal of my time and sleep to this. Now it’s about my day job and the free time that I have I want to concentrate on my comic book. I’m slowly starting to creep my way back into getting my second draft completed. Obviously life always seems to get in the way, which I’m going to have to learn to either balance or deal with, but that’s a post for another time.
My god, it’s been a good long while since I’ve posted here, and honestly there is sooo much good stuff to talk about. The main issue I guess is that now my thoughts are distributed across the net. From Flickr, to Facebook, from Twitter to Instagram, to Google Reader. It’s no longer concentrated in one spot.
Also, I don’t update with personnal stuff, which really is what this blog was originally meant to be about. It’s a long form of expression, something that none of the above are.
So here’s the first bit of news, I’m officially engaged. Yeah, pretty sudden, even for me, but I guess, when you know, you know. And I knew very very quickly with Yasmine, from the first date I knew there was something up. Hopefully I might get her to start blogging on here as well.
Now all I need is a Habari app for my iphone and I’m good - yeah I got myself a brand spanking new iphone, which I love of course.
AutoCAD for Mac - It’s a long time coming, but one of the main reasons for not jumping to a mac for business just went out the windows (get it).
Biolab Disaster - Damn that boy is talented. From the creator of Asaph (which runs my the Elsewhere part of this website) comes this excellent platform game, done in HTML5, CSS, Javascript and Canvas. Look mum, no Flash required.
Macworld iPhone 4 cover - I love this sort of thing. It’s no DLSR, but you definitely don’t need your point and shoot at the bbq any more. Now if only I could get my hands on an iphone 4 I would be happy.
The Walking Dead trailer - From AMC, the new HBO. With Mad Men and Breaking Bad under their belts, they’re going for the hat trick with ‘The Walking Dead’ based on the Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard series of graphic novels.
iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners - Obviously couldn’t find this book at any of the book store that I frequent in Lebanon. Need to find a good store with computer manuals. But this books looks very interesting indeed. Put this in a long list of todo pile.
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged on a regular basis (with things other than just links and commentary).
It’s been a while since I actually did any proper blogging (which consisted of more than links and commentary, which is what this site really consisted of). The thing is my life has changed dramatically in the last few months, and it’s a massive shame that I haven’t really been talking about it in more detail, for myself, to reflect back on everything.
Engagement Rings So on Saturday I went hunting for engagement rings. I spent a good couple of hours learning about diamonds and then went off to my ‘family’ jeweler. He’s been providing for my family’s gold and diamond requirements for years, so obviously he came highly recommended. Off I went and had a look at honestly the single most gaudy, ugly, bling bling engagement rings you could imagine. I don’t know who looks at this stuff and actually thinks, yeah that’s a beauty. This stuff was horrible. So I struck a discussion with the guy, so I’ll find a design that suits our characters and sort it out.
What’s interesting is the fact that
The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains - Neil Gaiman, at the Sydney Opera House, reading a short story, with a quartet behind him and artwork by Eddie Campbell….yeah pretty cool.
Satoshi Kon passes away - probably the saddest news I’ve had in a really really long time. I couldn’t wait for his next movie, as Paprika is one of my absolute favourite things ever. So sad, and at such a young age, 47 years old.
DBA Pen - Love this sort of thing. If I could buy something like this I would. The truth is, I finish ALL of my pens off, so my only concern really is the non biodegradable plastic. Potato based plastic you say? Interesting. I’m totally there.
Muro - Seriously impressive HTML5 drawing tool at deviantart. Obviously the only problem I see is that it’s at DeviantArt, and they’re asking for you to login to purchase additional brushes. Still great to see what the web hold in the coming years (via swissmiss).
Apple store in Covent Garden - This is significant, because one of my best buds (Stathis) was the main MEP contractor on the project and has been living and breathing that project for a while now. Good work buddy, it looks awesome.
Coda Notes for Safari - Gotta love those Panic boys just for their sheer innovation in creation. This little add on is nothing but a great little addition to the web professional, no need for Adobe’s acrobat for this sort of thing.
OhLife - If you start seeing more blogging action here on the ‘Kode in the coming months, it’ll be thanks to this site. Over the years I’ve used different methods to actually communicate online. First it was a newsletter to my friends as a long bastard email. Then it was this blog. Then it was Facebook for a while and a bit of twitter. Now, now it’s nothing really. But I love writing, and I love maintaining this site. Writing an email to myself every day, with my most banal things is a good way of getting back to blogging again. At least that’s the thought process.
One thing I love about the OhLife site is just how beautifully put together it actually is. It’s a single column design (just the way I like it) with subtle backgrounds and little details everywhere. The colour scheme is calm and the little bit of red brings out everything as well.
The guys have been smart enough to make sure to allow you to export your entries as well incase you wanna do something with them, and setting up an account is exactly as it should be, completely painless.
Just was rereading some of the posts that I’ve written, and i’ve got to say, it’s a completely surreal affair. God dammit, I miss it when blogs where cool. When I could get more than 140 characters from someone. I miss it when people used to go on a bit of a rant about something in particular. Rather than give me a burst of a few words, actually go for a topic.
I guess nostalgia is a great thing, but also this blog is a beautiful record of my life and what’s been going down. In the past couple of years that level of intimacy has reduced somewhat dramatically and it’s basically
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2010 by Jean Nouvel - Last year’s Serpentine gallery was pretty bland, it’s good to see that things are going back to normal in terms of the extavegance. This is almost as amazing as the Frank Gehry installation from a few years ago.
V&A signage by Troika - This is excellent. Love the typography, love the neon blue.
Search Google - Truly amazing work from Philipp Antoni. I’ll definitely be using this in the future. It’s basically what google would have wanted to do, but didn’t know how.
Urbanized - The new documentary by Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Objectified). You know it’s going to be great.
Lost: The Complete Collection - Must have. Must buy. September is looking good for a Lost marathon.
User Interface Design Framework - Although I don’t use Illustrator (too heavy), this is most excellent.
It’s that time of the year again, where all of geekdom heads on down to San Diego for a weekend filled with comics, pop culture and weird shit. Thank god for the internet. Here’s a list of items that have caught my attention (I’ll update this list throughout the weekend):
And I’ll leave you with the image of the con for me so far.
You probably haven’t noticed but now the ‘Kode comes with a completely responsive shiney design, and by responsive design I mean it responds to the size of your screen, well by responds to the size of your screen, I mean if it’s less than 480px (size of your iphone/ipod/blackberry?) then you’ll still be able to read very clearly (without scrolling horizontally) my AMAZING writing, and the brilliant commentary that I provide to you on an extremely sporadic nature - what can I say I’m feeling in a sarcastic mood today.
So if you’re reading it on your feed reader, I guess you could visit the site properly to have a look. The main area i’m pretty happy with is the fact that even the images resize to accommodate (like in the illustration section).
The truth of the matter is, the current version of the ‘Kode is soo simple that doing this was pretty painless, and took an a few hours to read up on how to actually do it. The best resource as you would expect is found at these two A List Apart articles:
Then of course there are the prime examples to look at how this is achieved. Jonathan Hick’s for example has gone ALL out, with stylesheets for the iphone, ipad, 600px resolution, smaller, bigger whatever, it’s crazy - who the hell’s got the time? The general plan for the site is to keep doing general maintenance on the site and adding little things like this and generally bringing the design tighter together, trying to stay abreast with what’s going on the web (rather than being ahead of the curve).
Obviously, I could give a shit if it works in Internet Explorer.
So I’m there minding my own business, just checking my feeds and I see a familiar sight. Manji was mentioned on Devlounge as one of the single column themes of choice.
That’s pretty cool actually, seeing as it was designed over 4 years ago and hasn’t really been modified since. What’s interesting to me really is that there does seem a severe lack of super simple themes out there. Super simple is fucking hard to do and make stick - but that’s a topic for another time, which I fully intend on exploring.
Oh and btw, this is officially Broken Kode’s 1500th post.
Ragnarama - Dunno how I missed this, but Ragnar’s new website. Just started looking at his book Big City and it’s a tour de force of just page after page of amazing art in creating his story. Amazing stuff. If you can get a copy, definitely flick through it.
Bald, Unemployed and still living with my parents - Laughed soo hard when I saw this. Now I want a son just to make sure I get him this. (via Coudal)
Geomancy Typeface - Free typeface that’s worth having downloading. Easily of the same quality as all the excellent free fonts found at Exljbris Font Foundry.
Inspired by Coudal, I’ve decided to have a Page 2. It’s basically everything that doesn’t fit into my minimalist design. I’ll have to go into this design a bit more to be honest, because it’s basically longest running design. Every time I try and make it ‘better’ I always end up coming back to the same thing, only with a minor tweak here or there. I’ve not really talked about it, because it never seems all that interesting. What is interesting is that I’ve got over 15 iterations of the current design as I experimented with layout always coming back. I’ll have to post them in a gallery at some point.
Rian Hughes’s of London Logo Proposal - This is by one of my favourite designers of all time, Rian Hughes. Shame it’s never going to be used, as it’s amazing.
Cover Browser - Gallery of over 450,000 comic book covers. Yeah I’m pretty jazzed about this site. Weird how the main comic book new sites haven’t mention this gem.
Lewis and Jensen - Awesome Vodafone ad with a decided F1 twist. Mclaren seem to always like this sort of thing (last time I saw a good F1 ad was when Alonso was at Mclaren).
New Mac Mini - New Mac Mini is out today. As an owner of the previous version, I can honestly say it was one of the best buys for me. It’s been slimmed down even further and makes it easier for additional RAM to be added. Friggin awesome!
Didi - While still on the whole World Cup kick, excellent typographic tees with the major players for each team. Most excellent. I really want the Argentina one.
Soccer Aid World Cup 2010 Poster - By Trebleseven Design, this is an excellent poster for the World Cup. Which I’d seen this before, because I would have definitely got this for the house.
Alan Moore’s Unearthing - Am a fan of the man’s for sure, but never really heard any of his recordings. In any case, this looks like a pretty impressive package.
We ate the children last - In preparation for Yann Martel’s latest book, here’s what the man wrote between ‘Life of Pi’ and ‘Beatrice and VIrgil’.
Supermarket - Great design. Straight from designers. This place is absolutely amazing. So much sweet looking stuff. Spending 10 minutes here I could probably spent like $1000 easy.
Less Framework - Interesting experiment to quickly sort out your site to ‘fit’ into smaller screens.
Redesigned Wikipedia - Honestly I hadn’t noticed until today. I instantly look at the content, as for years I’ve ignored everything around it. This, the latest ‘Vector’ theme is actually extremely elegant and a great transition for the site.
Loved And Lost - Amazing interactive picture of all the characters with a brief recap of who they are and what happened to them. Looking through this, you just start remembering all the questions they just didn’t bother answering.
National mascots - Don’t know what to make of the new London 2012 Olympic Mascots. What I do know however is that I love the comparison to the Prime Minister and Deputy.
Google - In case you missed it, play Pac Man for the next 48 hours on the google home page. The controls are a bit sluggish, but still it’s pretty damn impressive what can be done nowadays on the web. Just press ‘Insert Coin’. Funny how my last three posts have been Google news. Must be a bit of a Google week.
Google TV - I guess it was only a matter of time really. Now that I’ve moved to Lebanon, i’ll probably not be able to use something like this for many many years (proper internet connection was one of the things I gave up here).
Android 2.2 - And Google keeps on rolling (a month?) before Apple releases the latest iPhone. Of course we already know what’s coming on that front thanks to a drunken Apple employee.
It’s 5:55 in the morning and I’ve just woken up to get ready for work after 6 long months away from a regular gig on the basis that I was on sabbatical. You don’t change your life all that often, but right now that’s exactly what I’m about to embark on.
I’ll probably be blogging more often and maybe doing a compare and contrast between life over here and life in the UK. The first difference at the moment is that rather than waking up and getting ready to go to work by walking to the Golders Green tube station, I’m waking up and getting ready for a 28 minute drive to Beirut.
Not sure which is better, which is worse, but what I do know is that it’s completely different and there is something of a novelty issue associated with it. Wish me luck everyone.
One of the things that I’m hoping to cut by at least 20 minutes is my commute. Currently it takes between 38 and 40 minutes (including parking). The part which took the most was actually from Saida to Beirut which took a little more than originally anticipated. In contrast once I was in Beirut the drive to Dora area took no more than 4 minutes or something silly like that.
Truth be told I can live with that kind of commute for a little while. I’m guaranteed a place to sit, don’t have to wait for the next train to come along. Don’t need to be squeezed getting on and off. No sweating like a bastard because it’s 35 degrees down there in the summer. Sure I get the odd asshole who cuts me off, or yells because he thinks the road is his own and can go anywhere he damn well pleases (without indicating), but it’s a small price to pay. The commute is about 10 minutes more than it used to be in London.
One of the things I’ve done is actually started downloading some audiobooks and lectures that I’ve been meaning to listen to for ages. As I wanted something relatively light, I’ve started with the first Harry Potter audiobook. After many many years of people TRYING really hard to get me to dip my toe in this universe, I’ve finally taken the plunge thanks to Stephen Fry’s amazing voice and reading abilities. To be honest with you, I wish he’d read all of my audiobooks. The man is amazing at it. I’ve heard about 3 chapters so far and it’s all very predictable so far and really can’t see what all the fuss is about.
Let’s finish the first book, since at least then I can claim to have given it some of my time before I write it off. Let’s just say the concept has never really appealed to me.
Bonobo Black Sand Album - One of my favourite soft electronica bands releases their latest album (for reference these guys are like ‘Boards of Canada’).
Dave and Nick - An actually pretty historic event in British politics. I’ve never lived under anything but a Labour government and it was exceedingly good to me. This change in dynamics is bound to be interesting if nothing else. I kinda wish I was there to see what comes out (and whether it will actually last the prescribed 5 years). If nothing else I will be following the events closely for sure.
So I’m sitting in Athens International Airport, on my way to a new life. 6 months ago it would have been soo easy to simply nod my head and continue to stay as if nothing had changed for another year. Another missed opportunity. Instead, I said that I would first try and see what was outside the British borders.
I found the sun, family, food and a great deal more. I found a different way of life, which would allow me to actually start thinking about more than the next couple of years. The strangest feeling is that I’m going back to where I was born, but never lived. For years, it was the language, some customs and the summers that kept me feeling Lebanese in any way. For the most part I’m not Lebanese, but in many other respects I’m 100% Lebanese because oddly enough, like me there are MILLIONS. Well that’s not completely true. There are millions of people living outside of Lebanon that can claim in one way or another to call themselves Lebanese, but those that return to start a new chapter in my life? There can’t be millions, there can be thousands…maybe?
I do plan on doing a range of things over the next few years and I’ll be talking about them in a lot more detail on this website. It’s been the one of the few constants in this transitory period of my life and will be playing a very important role in the coming years as well.
To all those I left behind in London, I love you all, I will miss you soo much. 10 days was definitely not enough but we’ve got a lifetime to catch up.
This will be part of a new series of posts that basically deal with my moving over to Lebanon and exactly what I’ve been going through. It’s important to me to catalogue these things to make sure that I don’t forget how things are in a normal country, because it’s very easy to assimilate and you eventually think that actually what you’re doing is normal….when it’s actually not.
So I was meant to fly into Lebanon tomorrow afternoon (which I’m still doing hopefully) and then take a cab from the airport directly to the VW dealership - oh yeah I bought my first ever car. This one here:
It’s a Golf. It’s shark blue. It’s a solid little car and what I need for the time being in Lebanon. I really really really wanted an Alfa Romeo Guillietta, but alas, spare parts in Lebanon are extortionate and getting someone to actually sort it out for you isn’t really all that easy. There are a set number of places that can help you out.
Now the place I bought it from is the Kettaneh dealership, which has got several cars under their banner. So my representative, nice guy, but unfortunately not very organised. His sole task was to get my car registered in time for me when I got back to Lebanon. Big Massive Fail (BMF for short). No he only got around to sending it off today. It officially takes 48hrs. So I’ve had to go and rent a car for 24hours. Not sure how much it’s going to cost me, but alas it’s a pain in my ass, that could have been prevented if he’d basically registered the car when I transfered the required payment to them 10 days ago.
So file this one under: In Lebanon, they all lie.
Audrey Hepburn Portfolio - Amazing sketchbook collection with one of the best subjects ever.
Google Chrome Speed Tests - The great Google Chrome adverts continue to roll out. This is one of those things that really shows the difference in the way a company like Google can stand behind it’s product in a big way.
HTML5 for Web Designers - This is looking like a must read for this year. I’m planning on starting to get back into web designing for some small side projects and this would be a good book to get into.
The Daily Zoo 2 - Having just bought the first book, I can tell you that this is an amazing art book, with an amazing story behind it. Draw an animal every day for a year…well two years so far and counting.
Can they cut it? - Fantastic venn diagram of the proposed budget cuts from the various parties and how they aim to tighten up the UK economy if they get elected. Lots of ideas, excellent presentation as always by the Guardian website.
Probably not an ongoing thing, but I’ve recently found a few YouTube videos that should help you waste some time on this lazy sunday afternoon:
Vote for Policies - Excellent website. You have to do it if you’re a British Citizen. The results will definitely surprise you. Currently based on policy alone, the Green Party would lead the country.
What is a hung parliament? - Excellent guide for those scratching their heads about the actual numbers involved. It’s actually a lot closer than you think.
Earlier on in my sabbatical, my parents decided to sort out the house down in Lebanon, where I was going to be doing my creative drawing and writing. However, I did a couple of side projects as well. A couple of logos and decided to do my first large scale art project, a door of stained glass.
This was to fill a hole the size of a door into the living room in the house in Lebanon. The reason for filling it in is mainly to do with layout, but needless to say we’re not using that door so having something that represents the family is more than a welcome addition.
To understand what this image means you have to know a little bit about my family history. My parents and I were born in Lebanon. We all migrated to Greece shortly after I was born, and five years later my brother was born in Athens.
This history is represented by the cedar tree (Lebanon) at the bottom and the three fish swimming up towards an olive tree (Greece) where a little fish is waiting.
So once the guys got it, they printed out and then began carving it out.
And here is the finally finished stained glass family portrait installed:
And here are some details:
So what do I feel about the final product? I think the carving process was superb, second to none. I think however that the colouring could have been done in a better fashion. There are mistakes and the final colours were not exactly as I had imagined, or chosen. The thing is that no matter these minor quibbles, it’s nothing compared to the sheer joy I get when I look at it changing colours throughout the day, you forget everything else.
Graphic.ly - Has just launched. Maybe this will mean I keep more in touch with weekly comics. It all depends on how good the software is. I tend to shy away from anything Adobe Air related. Review of this software soon.
Appear - Graphic Design Bureau. Seriously sweet website, because it’s all done in javascript, no flash required.
Late Bloomers - One of the best articles found in Malcolm Gladwell’s collection of articles ‘What the Dog Saw’. This one really hit home for me, because I approach art and design and creativity in exactly the same way described here. In fact it’s actually very freaky how similar my approach is. Aitus Moralis has been written and rewritten 4 times over before I got to the draft that I’m working on now.
Alfa Romeo Giulietta - I’m in love with Giulietta. I saw it this morning. Compare this car to the equivalent VW Golf, there is no comparison.
Even though it looks like I failed in continuing with Project 52, I only see the month of March as a minor hiccup. Basically I got a bit busy with stuff, so lets leave it at that. However in this month I have been doing some art very sporadically. One of the things that I have been doing is actually taking those rough and ready doodles that I created as the template/backbone of the story and started with the more detailed thumbnails.
These detailed thumbnails are basically the graphic novel in a form that is readable. While all the details are not there, it becomes something that can be read by someone other than me, and they can actually follow it.
One of the greatest lessons I learnt during the Comica Competition from last year was that the story got better the more people that read it. Not because I took everything at face value and changed, but when there was a good idea, I would listen and tweak the story accordingly. The vision for the story remained in tact, but the delivery was modified ever so slightly and it really did enhance it several times over.
With that in mind, I really wanted to make sure that I had something that I could give to people at the end of my sabbatical, so that I could start drawing the final pages afterwards. At this stage, I don’t know if that’s a possibility (as I’ve not been able to complete much in the way of
Sometime in February, my cousin asked me to sort out the logo for his jewellery business. I was obviously happy to oblige, and actually had some spare capacity to sort it out for him. The thing is, I sqaundarded most of that time, so he rings me on a Saturday to ask me how the logo was going….uh oh spagettio. Rushed to the only coffee place worth a shit in Saida and started sketching furiously. Pretty quickly I had my idea. In fact, the crazy thing is that by the end of the night I had created his logo and sent it out to him.
I played around with the colours (although his only request was to have the colour scheme be burgundy and grey). I thought it couldn’t hurt for them to see what it would look like in different colours.
So after a couple of colour tweaks he asked for I sent it through. The reason he was anxious for the logo to be sorted out quickly was because he had an exhibition in Kuwait and had a stand. A few weeks later he was in Lebanon and he showed me pictures of the stand.
iTunes Visual Redesign - I soo wish that Apple would sort out the UI elements of iTunes, because it really is a complete joke. Here’s soemthing Brandon did for free. Use it damn you.
Cameron Stewart Drawing Catwoman - Love me some Cameron Stewart. Love these videos of comic professionals drawing characters.
Creative Review incredible dissolving bag - This is from 6 months ago but it still remains as one of those great ideas, that I hope others adapt in the near future.
Facebook Facelift - Have you noticed how Facebook always seems to be changing it’s look every 6 months? This would have been one of those welcome changes. Having said that, being away from my friends during this sabbatical, I’m actually very thankful for Facebook.
Reindy Allendra - Industrial Design portfolio of this Indonesian native. The KLM blimp being a highlight.
Guillin Fishermen - One of the best adverts I’ve seen for HSBC (it’s old, but I’m going through all my draft posts trying to get them below 50).
The Complete Famous Artist Course - This is one of the best resources for aspiring artists out there - instant bookmark and download.
The Perfect Boiled Eggs - This is one of those pages that you’ll be getting back with regularity.
Egypt / Lebanon Montage - Excellent montage filmed by another Khaled. Excellent choice of music as well.
Spider-Man The Other Review - I do have another website…I’ve not been giving it much love. Fortunately the excellent James Huff has taken it upon himself to start reviewing again, which is only a good thing. Hopefully I’ll get inspired to start review some stuff in the not too distant future as well. If you’re into graphic novels and the comic book form, Splash Panel has got only good recommendations. We’d don’t review books we didn’t like.
Alphaposter - While I’m talking about love the detail in these posters as well (obviously not as elaborate as the Colosseo poster, but lovely nonetheless).
Colosseo Letterpress Poster - Love the attention to detail of course. It’s objects like this that make design something special.
Brazilian strip by Nike - Love the concept of reusing waste in a positive way like this. Wonder when the day will come when we’re not as wasteful with everything as we are now…
Hate Mail from Third Graders - If this had happened when I was in the 6th grade and planets and the solar system was my passion, I’d be doing a lot worse than this. (via Coudal)
F1 Calendar 2010 - Customised to your timezone. With all the practices (or without, it’s your choice). Most excellent.
Dali’s Adventures In Wonderland - You know, to prepare you for the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp fest. Love the statue, always the best Dali work in my opinion.
Lost Art of Inglourious Basterds - Some great looking pieces. Not seen David Choe’s work in YEARS so it’s nice to see he hasn’t shot himself or anything and he’s still producing great work.
Zoolander Sequel - The first is a cult classic. Will a sequel be any good? I dunno, but if he can do an Austin Powers where the sequel is just as good as the first one, then I’ll be happy.
So this week was spent doing character designs. With an exhaustive list of 56 characters that need to be created, it’s pretty easy to flip between characters as I build the library and as more ideas become clearer in my head. Like with the writing process, it’s amazing how sometimes your pencil and pen take you in a direction that you didn’t actually originally imagine. It just happens in front of you and comes from no where.
Each time I draw the character I get more comfortable with drawing them and new ideas manifest themselves to better flesh out the character and enhance their look. Hopefully by the time I have to draw them in the final pages I will have the proper feel of the characters.
For these particular drawings I decided to also play around with my water colours. The truth is I’ve not touched a paintbrush and gauche since 2002 or something like that, so to say I’m completely rusty is a little bit of an understatement. In fact I’d so go far as to say, I honestly suck major balls when it comes to painting at the moment from an already limited experience built earlier on in my life. I’ve not developed this skill at all and I can see how my line art has moved forward whereas my painted work has all but stagnated.
The other major point to make is that I don’t have any of my books around me which basically teach me the basics of water colours. In stead I’m basically learning by doing…which is just going to mean taking a hell of a lot longer to get to a decent standard where I’m not ruining the drawing/sketch with my ghastly colour combinations.
This is a small peek. I’ll be sharing more drawings as they come along.
Be still my bleeding heart. Yesterday I saw an interview on the BBC with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whom I rate extremely highly as one of my favourite directors. Well amidst a pretty poor interview (that guy from’Hard Talk' really needed a kick in the head) Jean-Pierre let it slip that after ‘A very long engagement’ he spent 2 years working on the ‘Life of Pi’…basically one of my favourite books. Man that would have been AMAZING. Chalk that one along with ‘Dune’ by Alejandro Jodorowsky as the great movies we’ll never get to see.
Obviously it’s not all doom and gloom for the ‘Life of Pi’, we get Ang Lee to release his version in 2011. Can’t wait.
How are Red Bull’s helmets painted? - Love this breakdown, especially coming of the new Vettel helmet that looks like a Red Bull can. Brilliant.
Mark Coleran Visual Designer - Remember all those awesome futuristic designs in movies? Ever wonder who designs them? Mark Coleran, that’s who.
@Astro_Soichi - If there’s one new person you should be following on Twitter is Soichi who has been posting breathtaking photos from space and sharing them with the world.
This week I moved on from character descriptions and turned my attentions to providing a more comprehensive set of descriptions for the world and environment that ‘Aitus Moralis’ will occupy. This was actually much more rewarding than the character descriptions exercise. Originally I was dreading it, because the worlds I imagine in my head are overtly complex and I don’t think I have the skill to bring them to life, but really because I don’t want them to suck.
Like before these descriptions are each giving a single sheet of paper that I start scribbling on, letting my imagination run wild. One of the things that I noticed however was in doing these descriptions this also went back and informed my story as well. I guess I was expecting my draft to expand and change during the next stage of the project, what i didn’t expect was my description for a building to have a direct impact on the sequence of events, moving a particular scene from the middle of the book to the end (to create greater impact).
Which has got me thinking about the route taken for the story. It’s not presented in a linear fashion, by any stretch of the imagination. Is that a good thing? Will it confuse my readers? Will both of them care (hey mum)? I also worry about whether or not readers will connect with the characters. I’m a great believer in letting your character’s actions dictate what they are and who they are, as opposed to them telling you these facts. Letting you build your own view of the character. I’ve been watching movies more intently to understand what makes a great character.
The one thing that I’ve not done yet is begun my research and information gathering for these worlds. This is basically the next three months worth of work. I’m going to be drawing character sheets and building the worlds, both on paper and virtually.
One of the tools I’m keen to use for this project is SketchUp, which I’ve used several times during the design of most of my projects. It’s an excellent tool, which has really grown over the years housing an impressive library of completed and available models.
Next week I’ll be showing the first character designs so far and hopefully the start of the second draft (more on that next week as well).
Movie Mr Men - This made me smile a lot. Love how he’s just constantly building this flickr set. Here are some of my favourites:
LOST Posters - Awesome minimalist posters. It’s definitely en vogue nowadays to do these, but I still like them.
Lotus Racing Official site - The new site is up for the new era of Lotus. I think these guys could actually be one of the few new teams that stays the distance.
Chrome Pointer Ad - One of the cutest adverts to hit the web in a while. I think it’s down to the music and the sound effects which really bring it to life.
Love that photo of Adrian Newey, so I thought I’d share today seeing as the new Red Bull was unveiled.
Charles Vess & Neil Gaiman’s Instructions - When this comes out it’s definitely high on my buy list. Charles Vess’s work has never looked better (he of Stardust fame).
Driving in Lebanon (a user manual) - Thought I was making it up eh? Hell a whole book has been published to catalogue some of the crazy shit these Lebanese do with their driving over here. The best part of the book is in the introduction explaining that it’s not ‘bad driving’ but rather ‘superior driving skills but irresponsible conduct’.
Overcoming Creative Block - Some excellent ideas in there. One of my favourites (which I’ve not tried yet, but was actually thinking about that today) was the idea of going to a local university art library and just snapping or photocopying things from old journals to get inspiration and creating a physical drawer or scrapbook with ideas in there. I know I’ll be requiring a lot of inspiration in the coming months.
‘Walking Man’ Sculpture Sells For $104.3 Mill - Never heard of Giacometti, but I fear that says more about me and my general lack of knowledge with regards to contemporary artists than anything else, but this sculpture is seriously excellent. Not worth $104million but still excellent nonetheless.
As a teenager, I was never ashamed to pledge my allegiance to this show (the original version, not the shit that has turned up this year). Up until the second year of University, this show was golden - I’m still not.
Happy 9.02.10!
Radius 10 - If I was in the UK now, this would have been mine. One of the nicest calendars I’ve ever seen.
This week has been dedicated to creating the characters and writing their descriptions. These descriptions were both what the character look like, but also how they behave, how they speak and how I will be showing this in the final graphic novel. As a complete typography nut (not as some people on the internet, I’m sure but a nut nonetheless), the lettering in this book will hopefully be something memorable (whether it’s good or not is debatable).
The thing that made an impression on me however was how the character descriptions were manifesting themselves. I basically wrote the name of every character on a separate piece of paper (the name sometimes was a description itself) and then I’d basically pick up a piece look at the ‘name’ and then start coming up with ideas and tangents. Everything would be written down, no matter how silly or ridiculous. I basically let my imagination flow, like a mind map.
Several times I’d write where the inspiration for this particular character was coming from. Was it a movie, was it a costume, was it an historical figure, all of this was written down. At this stage I’m not worried about the research as I am about putting down ideas down on paper. The research can come in the next stage of the design, as this is still all the early concept stage. These descriptions actually then inform the original draft script as it adds another layer to the story.
‘Aitus Moralis’ has over 50 characters that I have to design. Sometimes the characters would occupy several pages of description, while others were merely a couple of paragraphs. The amount presented is irrelevant; this is all about getting a base from which to start from.Some are obviously more important than others, but they all need to be designed in one way or another, but like lightning, ideas struck and characters were born.
dabbl - the radio station where your votes decide the music they play. I think I’ve FINALLY found my find new music solution that has been evading me for YEARS. This station is brilliant. I’ve been using this along with Snowtape (the internet radio station recorder I never knew I needed until now).
Ben Franklin’s Thirteen Moral Virtues - Found this great set of principles to live by.
Panic Blog - Just wanted to say that the Panic Blog (like most things related to Panic) is pure genius. Simple, but extremely clever with loads of thought put into it. I’m surprised this hasn’t been featured on design websites…probably because most of them are attracted to shiney things rather than subtle.
How To Make A Pencil Crossbow - Love this sort of thing, definitely going to be making one of these.
The History of the Ampersand - Even thought the whole Ampersand thing is pretty ‘tired’ it’s still always interesting to see the origin of things we now take for granted….god that sounded old.
Welcome To Macintosh Documentary - I’ve come relatively late to the house of Apple, so this was good watching.
Having completed my first ‘visual’ draft this week, I took a few days off and then began with the next step in the process, character and environment descriptions. Much like my draft this particular exercise began by going through the entire draft and recording the different types of characters that I would have to design and the sets/environments that they would be interacting in.
The idea is to basically brainstorm as much of this world as possible, by breaking down everything into pieces my brain can focus on. This whole process has been just that, breaking it all down into smaller pieces that work for me. This process may very well be completely ridiculous to someone else, but for me it works. The ideas keep flowing. Some of them are great, some of them are crap, but the essence of this is to get every onto paper. Let the idea breathe a bit. Let the idea have a form, even if it’s just something written onto a piece of paper and dies there.
Ideas are like sperm. 90% are going in the wrong direction and 10% are fighting the uphill battle to get to the egg. This process brings those 10% into contention, rather than having all 100% bottled up and waiting to explode…ok I think I might have drawn that analogy a bit far, but hopefully you get my meaning.
Each character or environment has got a page, or a series of pages dedicated for development. This is where the research for each character begins. Magazine clippings, downloaded photos, articles, whatever all get catalogued at this stage to allow for when I start designing the character’s appearance this task is relatively straight forward. I’m sure that during the drawing process more ideas will bubble to the top, but they’ll only have bubbled after I’d gotten everything out there and let it ferment for a few days.
In this, the first volume of ‘Aitus Moralis’, I currently have between 25-35 characters to design. Some obviously are more important than others, but even the simple ones will probably take a good deal of research. This trifecta of documents ‘Visual Script’, the Character Descriptions and the Environment Descriptions provide me with all the founding blocks I need to create my first readable draft (more on this in future posts) and a series of accompanying character design sheets for when the final art is being created.
The Losers Movie - From the excellent series of graphic novels by Andy Diggle and Jock. It’s fresh, it’s fun, it’ll be better than the A-Team guaranteed. Also it’s got Stringer Bell! I mean c’mon this is the first thing I’ve seen him in, since The Wire.
The first logo design of 2010 is for my oldest friend Yanni’s DJ Collective ‘Viasound’ (playing a range of House and Electronica music) which operate out of Athens, Greece. The guys have been doing this for several years but they’ve not been gaining much traction unfortunately, which is a shame because they truly have a passion for this type of music.
When we were discussing what they were doing wrong, I just kinda had the image of the logo in my head. Of course, it’s not that I think the logo is what is holding them back, but rather my own attempt to make the world slightly prettier. I think that’s ultimately what designers tend to want to do - prettify the world.
The idea just came through, and it just wouldn’t let go. We were out for some Italian and I quickly started scribbling these things down onto a napkin while talking to him. From that napkin, I just kept doodling until I got the angles that I felt worked the best.
The technique of using your brain to fill in the rest of the logo is something that is widely used in comics, but I think it works effectively in this design as well.
Seems I’ll be designing a logo a month (at least that’s the route I’m on at the moment). I’ve got another 2-3 more logos to create for various friends and family. I like doing it because it flexes a specific muscle that I don’t generally tend to use much anymore as I concentrate on my graphic novel.
The Complete Chart of Characters’ Past Connections - Leading up to the season premiere next week, i expect a lot more of these things flying around (via @noscope)
This is an important day for me. Completed my first ever draft script for ‘Aitus Moralis’. This is what I have been working on for the entire month of January; and this is what 65 pages looks like:
There is still a great deal to be done, but for me, I can look at this collection of pages and take solace in the fact that things are moving in the right direction. Here’s one of the pages so you get an idea of what kind of visual representation this script is:
Last.fm Visualisations - Oh my god, I might actually start using last.fm just so that i can get myself some meaningful posters and put them up. Also Felton’s annual report is up for pre-ordering. If wasn’t in Lebanon, I think I’d get myself a copy this year.
Today I got a fantastic email from someone I’d never met. They downloaded ‘Coffee Beans’ and actually was the first unknown person that actually sent me their thoughts on the story.
One of the biggest lessons that I gained from writing coffee beans was the fact that
I wished someone had told me years ago what I should do after next. This next step is what’s kept me back from having completed my graphic novel years ago I think. That’s not completely true, only partly, there were of course many more reasons but this is a big one.
Once the entire story has been mapped out in a series of single sentences, the heavy lifting begins. As before these sentences are grouped in Acts, like in a movie where you have scene changes, I consider each act the stuff that happens been a major scene change. In ‘Aitus Moralis’ these scene range between 5 and 10 pages each and total around 60-70 pages. So in total I’ve got around 70 lines of text. Each line describing a page.
At this stage no dialogue is put, no real descriptions, just ideas. Years ago, Bob Gale (the writer of the ‘Back to the Future’ movies, and one of the architects of the Batman: No Man’s Land year long story) said that it is wise to know where you’re going with a story before you’ve begun it; how you get there can be filled in later.
This has always been something I’ve driven towards. The problem is of course that in the past I honestly thought that the best way to get the process underway was to keep writing. I would do various exercises to get me to write. I’d write a page a day. I’d write random thoughts, I’d just write. I ended up with 100s of pages of script and character descriptions and no graphic novel.
When I came to drawing at the beginning of this sabbatical, I found my scripts didn’t connect with me. I couldn’t visualise what obviously was in my head at the time I wrote it. The problem of course was that I’d written this years ago and so there was no way to come up with the actual result.
The method that I stumbled upon, was to basically take that single sentence and start to scribble my thoughts onto the page. Bits of dialogue, doodles of faces, structure of the page. Panels. Anything that I thought that I wanted to happen. Camera shots that I wanted to achieve. The page then would basically grow organically. These effectively show you what is going on the page indicatively.
Often times I go back to previous pages as I get an idea. It’s all scribbled down. What I end up with is a collection of pages that more or less map out the entire book. From start to finish. Obviously the only person that has any clear idea of what is going on here is me…but that’s ok. I’ve visually created a draft ‘script’ that I can then start building upon.
I wish someone had told me about doing this as I was writing those 100s of pages. I might have had a visual script to work from, rather than 100s of pages of text with no context.
What amused me was when I was at the bookstore a week ago and i saw the Herge ‘Tintin and Alpha-Art’ book which basically showed his ‘script’ to final page methodology for his final unfinished book. The script was pretty much done in the same way.
At the moment, I’ve finished 45 pages in this draft method, seeing as I started this process little over a month ago, I’m on target to finishing off the whole first draft by the end of the month.
If you’re subscribed to the site, then you’ve no doubt been bombarded this last day with 15 or so ‘new’ posts. These are all part of the illustration section which I’ve been putting together. Regulars of the site for a while will recognise a lot of these images, however there are several new ones and others that have never been shown in this way.
I kept thinking about the best way to put this section together, as there is a lot of stuff I’ve got on my harddisc that’s not seen the soft glow of the internet in years. Hopefully because of the general ease with which this section is maintained, I’ll be constantly uploading images to this section, because I’ve always believed that all art needs to be shown, because it gives you perspective on where you where artistically before and how much you’ve improved in the time passed.
The Gates Notes - Excellent looking site from Bill. Is it me, or does it feel as though he’s generally distancing himself from both MS and Fester (Steve Balmer).
Banksy film to debut at Sundance - Soo, totally watching this when it comes out. What can I say, I’m one of those poor fools that actually enjoys what the man does. (via @stevemassart)
N.Design Studio - Nick La’s new website. Seriously I don’t even know where to start. The attention to detail is mind boggling. It’s the sort of shit I wish I could have pulled off like 4 years ago. The write up is also just as impressive.
Slide Screen - If I owned an Android phone, this is possible the first App that would be top on my list…if I had a smart phone (only a few months before that becomes a reality).
As it’s been said in several places, once you get used to using Chrome on the Mac, it just grows on you. The general minimalist nature of the browser captures you. The little animations used to open and close a tab, rearranging the tabs animation, the drop down search field, the fact that the tabs stay the same size, all of these details begin to actually make the browsing experience more pleasant.
After 2 years on the Mac, I’ve actually switched from Safari. Firefox is a thing of the past for me. Now the extensions are definitely on par with anything Firefox has to offer, on both Safari and on Chrome, and actually as always there are a few innovations that are even more killer on Safari for example.
At first I thought that the space between the tabs and the menu was a waste of space. In actual fact it’s what makes it work on the Mac. It’s a shame that the design philosophy taken up for Windows cannot be implemented on the Mac because I actually completely agree with it. Hopefully, when full page browsing comes to OSX Lion, we should be seeing another shift.
Screenshot Plus - Best. Widget. Ever. You want to take screenshots? This is the only thing you need. Seriously.
A Song for a Son - While we’re on the subject of the Pumpkins and free songs, here’s the first track from the album (I knew that 02 track number on the previous song meant I was missing something).
Widow Wake My Mind - New Smashing Pumpkins song is up on their MySpace site. Oh hell, here’s a direct link for you to grab it now - the song reminds me of Zwan than the Pumpkins…not an instant classic for me.
Following on from our previous post, we’ve now gotten our paragraph which breaks down the entire story into a few key sentences. So for example Star Wars could be quickly broken down into:
Or something along those lines. So what’s the next step? Well the way I’ve currently been going about it (in this series dedicated just to documenting the creating of my own graphic novel) is expanding those few paragraphs into Acts. These Acts are basically very brief descriptions of the above sentences broken down into pages. It’s all meant to provide a skeleton of roughly what is going to happen within each page and roughly how many pages are going to be required in each Act.
This is useful for many reasons. It gives us a very loose frame from which we can either choose to expand or reduce, depending on which direction we choose to take it. In addition to this we also get a general feel for the number of pages that we’re going to need.
Currently as it stands ‘Aitus Moralis’ has a total of 9 Acts and requires around 65 pages for the first volume. The final page count might go up or down, but by and large it will hover around that number. This might not seem like a large number, but it’s actually a little bit larger than an European graphic novel or a 3 issue American mini series.
Now the last part that’s pretty important for me to disclose is that I’ve actually done all of the above by hand. I’ve not typed any of this up, it’s all hand doodles. I’ve found that this is a much more productive manner of creating than typing it on a screen. It feels more organic to me, which is weird since I’m not a technophobe and yet my most personal project I’m going COMPLETELY analogue (even planning to hand letter it as well).
Residency #139 - I will be applying for one of the residency positions. It fits PERFECTLY with what I’m doing at the moment. By the end of May, I should have the entire story properly roughed out with dialogue and hopefully a few pages and several (if not most of the character designs) for my graphic novel. It’s funny how things sometimes fall into place. Even if I don’t get the residency, this will still give me a deadline that MUST be met and create a package that can stand on it’s own two legs. If I’m not mistaken there are 24 positions available, 8 for Paul Pope, 8 for Craig Thompson and 8 for Svetlana Chmakova. The deadline is the 21st of May…much later than my sabbatical is over, so plenty of time to finish by then.
Of course if I do get one of the positions, it’ll be a pretty big battle to actually get another 3 weeks off from work so soon after my sabbatical…but we’ll cross that bridge if we really have to when we get there.
I’m about to read Robert Fisk’s “Great War of Civilisation”, but I’m reminded of one of my favourite quotes by Kahlil Gibran, and I thought I’d share it with everyone:
The quote begins the only other book of Fisk I’ve read…Pity the Nation.
The 50 Best Albums of the Decade - Obviously I don’t agree with this list, but looking for a list like this is always difficult. There are some definite classics in there (notably Arcade Fire). Missing would be Porcupine Tree and the only Smashing Pumpkins album (hey I didn’t say I wouldn’t be biased in my comments).
Top Shelf 2.0 - Loads of excellent comics for your devouring pleasure over at Top Shelf. I’ve not read anything from the fine gents in a while (several years ago I used to buy everything they did, but alas I started looking elsewhere).
This will be the first in a series of 52 posts where I actually write something meaty. I know I’ve lost out on one week, so this week you’ll get 2 awesomely crafted posts, lucky (sorry if this post sounds a bit pompous, I’ve been watching A LOT of House recently, Hugh Laurie has never been better, not even in Black Adder).
So what am I going to talk about? I’m going to concentrate on the creative process that I’m currently employing in creating my first graphic novel (which I’ve taken a 6 month sabbatical to progress and reflect on my life). So far I’m 2 months into the process so I thought it would be good to talk about where I am right now with the process, what I’ve learnt and what you can learn if you’re thinking of doing the same thing.
This took a little while but the basic tip I have to give is when you are going to write and draw a graphic novel you have to just get on and do it. If you’re like me, you probably think you’re not professional enough to get on with it. Your art isn’t up to professional standard, your characters aren’t well developed, you’re just not THERE yet.
See the problem is, you’re never going to get THERE, unless you actually start with the process. Unless you put pen/pencil to paper, it’s not going to happen.
So how do you actually start your graphic novel? Well, obviously you need an idea, and you have to want to SAY something. You could be wanting to make a fluff piece on something, or make an action thriller about something, but I don’t care about that. I want graphic novels that push the medium forward, that make you appreicate the piece of art that you are holding in your hands, that is what I’m talking about.
After the Comica Competition, I finally found my method. It did take a while to understand it but here’s the first step of the process. Get your idea, and break it down in ACTS. These ACTS should be no more than a sentence. The describe your entire story in a single paragraph.
The idea is that you take something that is going to take a year to 2 years to make into smaller bite sized pieces, that you can actually digest quickly and easily. You instantly know what you are getting yourself into. You understand where the story is going. What the hook is, what the twist is. You get the skeleton of the story and that is a simple start.
Next post I’ll tell you what you do with that paragraph.
PW Critic’s Graphic Novel Poll - Great list of graphic novels that came out in 2009. The obvious candidates like Asterios Polyp, The Hunter and the one that I feel has been COMPLETELY neglected by the comics community is Kabuki: The Alchemy.
The year in Manga - Also an excellent list of things that are definitely on my list, but I’ve not had a chance to buy/read yet (I did mention Children of the Sea though, and that book does look amazing).
Children of the Sea - Go read this for free. I’m going to be buying the volumes as well, but this is online for free for you to devour (I’m needing this sort of fix to keep me happy in my graphic novel deprived country).
not simple - And another series I’ve heard really excellent things about as well. More great Manga than you can shake a stick at.
AppleGeeks 3.0 - I’ve not heard of this, but it’s actually pretty well done. I think I’ll be buying the first volume when I get back to comic book civilisation (yeah there’s not my in way of anglophone comics here in Lebanon, the fekking landscape is completely barren).
Turf - New four issue comic book series by Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards. This thing is going to sell like a bazillion copies.
Looking forward to 2010 - A good start of graphic novels that are coming out in 2010. The ones that are interesting to me are:
January
February
April
May
June
July
October
December
Update: I’ll be adding more graphic novels as I see them coming, with links to where I’ve read/heard about them.
Best Comics of 2009 by Comics Alliance: 10-5, 4-2 and 1.
I’d agree with most of the selections, except they’ve not included a few that have made my list.
In an attempt to try and get more into the art scene over here, the following list provides some of the places I’ve uncovered. Yesterday I saw Timeout Beirut and so I quickly checked online and lo and behold there is a decent website with some information regarding Beirut and it’s culture in general. The problem of course is that websites are not provided, so as google is my friend I’ve decided to make a list and put them in a table for all of those would be artists out there looking for this information and some commentary on what’s going on in each. I will be updating this, and probably making a downloadable or editable excel spreadsheet so that people can also add their own thoughts etc.
The Art Circle Beirut Art Centre
Movies in Lebanon - Another link for those on the ground in Lebanon. Two drop down links, gives you the movie listing by theatre and by film. Then it’s got a quick breakdown of the times they play. I’ll probably be peppering my blog with these quick links. They’re more for me and others like me, who don’t live here and need information quickly once they get here.
Büro Destruct III - Thought I’d point out that the latest book from this excellent Swiss design firm is out. I’ve got Buro Destruct II and is one of my favourite design books.
Those crazy Swiss and their matching jumpers.
If you’re planning a trip to Beirut, Lebanon, be sure to either buy yourself the printed copy of ‘Zawarib Beirut’ or keep this link handy. It’s basically the equivalent of an A-Z. Essential even though Beirut is not that big.
Reading One Book a Week for a Year - Inaki Escudero read one book every week for a year. In the interview he describes how he accomplished it and what he learnt. Love the fact that Scott McCloud get’s a mention in the top 5. (via swiss miss)
So my lesson for today is Ashura. I thought this is significant as it’s the first I’ve heard of it personally, but it’s an important period in time for Shia Muslims (a minority of 10-13% of Muslims). I’m not going to try and explain it because I can’t. Rather better read the wikipedia entry which provides a relatively interesting read.
The first in a series of best of 2009, we’ll kick things off with my favourite topic, Graphic Novels. This year I had less time to read through things, due to work and actually making comics and drawing but I was still able to squeeze some stuff in.
Asterios Polyp
100 Bullets
KABUKI HC ALCHEMY (MR
House of Mystery
BEANWORLD HC VOL 01 WAHOOLAZUMA
So today I went to Bank Med to open myself a bank account here in Lebanon. For all you people outside the country, shit happens very very differently over here. Some for the better, other for the seriously fucked up.
The first that you realise, is that you actually have a bank manager. You have a problem, you have an issue you want to deal with, a transaction you need help with, here is a name that will provide you with the information you require. He knows all your information, he knows where you live, how much you make and generally where you are. In a country the size of Lebanon (fucking tiny) your bank manager knows a great deal.
In London, I’ve never had to speak to a bank manager…since I opened my account back in Nottingham in 1997. This lack of Bank manager for your mortgages was one of the things that the government lamented was missing and part of the reason for the economic depression.
Where was I? Oh yeah, back to my bank account. So I’m about to sign up and the guy tells me a general clause that I have to sign. The first is the fact that I’m not allowed to take with me the terms and conditions of my new bank account. I’m sorry, what the fuck? You want me to sign an 8 page document, and you don’t want me to take a copy to review at home later on, or for me to understand my rights? Nope, you cannot. This is ‘confidential’ information by the bank and for the bank? Obviously you’re allowed to read through the thing and the guy will get you a coffee while you wait. The pertinent points of course is that you get a SECRET ACCOUNT. As in, nobody is allowed to get into it, not the government, not anyone, well at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe, except I can’t tell you because that fucking information was not given too me.
The other thing of course that made me stop was the bloody way in which I was made to sign another form which basically allows the bank to keep the cash ‘frozen’ in the account for 6 months if it’s over $100,000. Ok, what the fuck is that all about? Not sure, but the value of money wasn’t written on the form. Seriously, as if it was some big secret.
I left the bank with an account, but with little information regarding my rights as a client or as to what my fees would be and what I would require to pay, interest rates etc. In a way I feel cheated. Cheated because I have no other option but to open a bank account in this stupid fashion. It’s not just BankMed that does this, it’s most (if not all Banks over here) or at least that’s what I’ve been informed (Bank Audi is just as elusive with information, except they charge you for EVERYTHING).
I’ll stop moaning about this, just thought I’d share today’s experience. Merry Christmas everyone, hope everyone has a great one.
Borders in Administration - How the hell did I miss this news? That’s a real shame as I generally liked the feel of Borders. It was never a massive destination for me (preferred Amazon) but I always liked their magazine selection which was second to none. 90% off if you’re in the UK (I would have been in there from like 5am in the morning).
So I finally got internet connection today, and this is my first post in Lebanon in over 5 years. So what do I think of the place so far? I’m not going to complain because honestly if I wanted to complain, this list would be absolutely massive. Instead I’m going to focus on somethings that I’ve noticed so far, and over the course of the time I spend here I’ll sniper attack dumbfuck assholes that annoy me (trust me living here for 2 weeks has made me encountered my fair share of supreme idiots).
Not sure where this comes from to be honest with you…these Lebanese say some fucked up shit. Hopefully the rainy season is over and I can except dry and sunny weather for a few weeks.
There are specific rules for roundabouts here as well. He who comes from outside the roundabout has way. You can also use the entrance of the roundabout if you wish to do a quick U-turn. This saves you the time going around the roundabout. Where’s the police? They’re eating falafels. Seriously. The stereotype of the big fat American cop eating donuts can be seen here as the not so fat, idiot cop eating his falafel. I don’t blame him, they taste AMAZING.
So far it’s been interesting, but hopefully tonight I also get to spend some time in the house and start drawing and writing again and from tomorrow we can start seeing other parts of this country and getting an understanding of what it all has to offer. Stay tuned.
CBR Events Calendar - Instant bookmark. Check back every once in a while. Hopefully people will start submitting international events as well.
Switch Restaurant by Karim Rashid - Okay, I’ve been bashing Dubai a bit too much, so here’s something that I think is actually very elegant and unique in it’s own right.
I’m travelling down to the homeland (for lack of better word, Lebanon) tomorrow morning. It’s the first time in nearly 5 years and much I’m sure has changed (or maybe nothing has changed). Either way, expect a bit of radio silence from the ‘kode in the forthcoming week, while I sort out our home down there, the internet and EVERYTHING else that I need to deal with (really boring shit like bank accounts, passport, identity cards, buying a car, boring shit, but essential shit).
See you on the other side.
Grooveshark Icon - Seeing as I’m using Grooveshark for all my musical needs right now, downloaded Fluid, and this pretty little icon by Pat Dryburgh. While I was at his site, I noticed that myself and Pat share a general similar sense of minimalist design, which is always nice to see as well.
Interview with Michael Chabon - On a complete sidenote, I’ve always loved the design of his book covers, which I believe are done by Will Staehle.
Dubai architecture you couldn’t make up - I remember the cloud in the sky, because we actually were part of that competition (or supported it), and I read about the twisting tower. It’s a car crash I tell you, I can’t get enough of it.
Dubai’s Improbable Tale - It’s like a car crash. I can’t get my eyes of how Dubai is going down the toilet. Wish I understood why? Maybe it’s to do with the fact that I hate the silliness of the whole place? Maybe it’s because I feel that the money Dubai spent on UTTER bullshit could have been better spent on sensible stuff that pushed the region forward?
Times Skimmer - Great idea and implementation of digesting the top news stories according to categories etc. This is what Google News should be like.
Work In Progress by Ricard Efa - Watch a comic page come to life in front of you. Great kick up the ass for yours truly.
So Owen’s responded to a few things that I’d written. I knew it was coming, and I knew it would be a big one, so true to form the man’s gotten back to me.
To be clear, although I didn’t voice it at the time, one of the reasons why I actually decided to move over to WordPress a while back was in fact when it transpired that Owen might leave the project (I don’t know the exact details, but it seems a community member was maybe hurting more than helping). In any case, Habari without Owen is a much poorer place. Not to take anything away from others who tirelessly contributed to the code, but he’s amassed probably three times as much commits as the next guy (roughly speaking) and generally leads the way - so I listen when he’s got something to say because I respect him enough because he spends the time to explain himself properly. Forget the fact that we don’t agree on everything, I think it’s clear we both want the software to move in the right direction.
He raises some decent points which i’d like to consider a bit in analysing how to move forward.
That’s the biggest problem. Who’s deciding which is unarguably better. I can argue that the question mark is brilliant and the non-descript H is rubbish till the cows come in, as I’m sure others can argue the direct opposite. The point is, it’s your opinion against someone elses. The frame work is not there for moving it forward either. We’re not going to strike lightning in a bottle, nor do I think that I can make something that is universally liked by everyone. Fuck me, that’s pretty much impossible to do. For everyone that thinks the Nike swoosh is an icon, you’ve got others proclaiming that it’s completely pointless.
The point is taking where we currently are and moving forward. Otherwise we end up hurting things more and ultimately not achieving anything.
I’ve created my logo. So if anything, I’m happy if I was the one making the decisions. My thought process is clear to me. The logo is out there for anyone to pick at as they please. I had an idea, I put it forward. It didn’t take me too long, hell writing up the previous 5 Habari posts probably took me longer to be honest. Like I said, if anything, I’ve got a nice t-shirt design.
I’m not adverse to exploring the issue further with a task force, hell I think it’s a great idea but ultimately I want to know that our work will be accepted, or voted upon. I want to know the structure, because the exercise will take more time out of me and honestly I don’t want to waste my time - which I’m sure you can appreciate.
Obviously everyone is welcome to contribute to the task force. If you have a thought or an idea, draw it and throw into the pot. We’ll discuss it find reasons for and against. Some might come up with one idea, that another person will run with which will be then built upon by another. Another might be inspired to go in a different direction. The ultimate idea is that at the end, hopefully there will be something tangible that this task force has produced.
The next question that should be raised is, does that then get used instantly? According to Owen, that shouldn’t be the case. It should be reviewed by the rest of the community, lather rinse repeat. This can work, after a fashion. I propose that this is done in a finite number of stages. When we design a building (I’m a building services engineer), the design process is broken down into 4 distinct stages (at least from an engineering POV). Concept, Scheme, Tender, Construction. In a similar fashion, we can also break it down into a few stages.
We report back at every stage. Any thoughts are processed then and then we move on. The other thing that is important is to have a proper timeline for all of this. Otherwise it’ll meander endlessly. Therefore I propose 1 month for each stage. Gives people enough time to consider, think about things, review, reflect, write emails/responses/posts if they have an issues concerns ideas.
We don’t jump back several stages. The rest of the community had the opportunity to review and present their ideas in the given timeframe. Inaction is not allowing progress which as I’ve explained has a negative affect on the software base itself.
If anything it’ll be an interesting exercise to see if design by committee works on the internet and in an open source project. After all, how do you think all those buildings that you live and work in were designed? By the choices of one person? Don’t be silly.
I hope so. Like I said, it’s not because I think this will raise my profile, or because I want to have the Habari logo as a notch in my design portfolio (I don’t even have one, although I keep meaning to create one). This is all being done to ensure the progression and future of the software (selfishly because I enjoy using it). I’m not going to let a few with myopic vision hinder PROGRESS dammit :).
So it seems I might have come across as being negative and I guess some have seen my last few posts as diatribes.
Just to be clear on something I’m genuinely not trying to be rude, I’m trying to build awareness because I can see a problem that I think will ultimately have an effect on the software and the developers themselves; which obviously I don’t want, because I enjoying using this software immensely and I want it to succeed. I don’t gain anything personally from doing this, except the satisfaction of giving something back.
I think the general consensus in Habariland is split with regards to my logo proposal:
Honestly, I can live with that; actually this can be considered as progress. Would it be useful to have a look at drawing a couple of other question marks? Would that be a rewarding or ultimately futile effort/exercise? Should i just carry on with the next task I’ve been working on (namely the website)? Would it actually be something to present for a vote by the community? Is there any point?
I ask only because I obviously want things to move in a positive direction to make the software better and to make the experience of using the software better.
Yesterday I had a conversation on IRC, which ultimately went nowhere (as a lot of these conversations have done in the past over there), so I thought I’d explain the reason for revisiting the branding, website, documentation aspects of the Habari project and why I feel that ultimately it’s hurting the development of the software.
Although much of design is thought of as subjective, obviously it’s not all subjective. There are rules that you can abide by, or completely ignore. The thing is, unlike code, if you don’t design it ‘correctly’ it’s not going break and give you back an error. The error isn’t immediate rather it is one the appears over the long term. What it will do is fragment your target audience, or detract them from coming back, or sticking around long enough to see if you’re worth the effort.
Habari has been going on for nearly 3 years now and while it seemed ok in the first few years for the software to have a less than adequate branding, right now I think it’s hurting the exposure of the software to invite new people. Maybe I’m wrong, but from looking around in the community areas, forum, IRC and mailing list and how active those are, as opposed to how active they could be, I don’t think I’m far off.
The issue here is that critical mass hasn’t happened, nor is a uniform infrastructure in place to allow it to flourish. And while some might think that these things aren’t important, I beg to differ. If you’re happy with the software doing what it does right now, and don’t want it to improve, then fine, there’s version 0.63 blog off; those that want to enhance the software and the blogging experiences of Habari, read on.
The problem you see is that there are quite a few different solutions out there for anyone to use. These alternative solutions are all free, they’re generally pretty mature in features, have decent documentation, and have a community (with varying degrees of success).
It’s not like going Habari, means you get a cheaper product. You get other things with Habari, which unfortunately have not been flaunted properly, because well, they haven’t been flaunted at all. Again the devil is in the detail.
So what’s the problem you ask? Well, the real problem here is that by not attracting a larger user base, you’re also detracting from new blood coming into the doors. This then reduces the amount of developers available to submit patches, to create plugins, to create themes, to push the general boundaries of the software. It’s left on the shoulders of an able few, and so the software takes more and more time to move forward, often putting more undue strain on the existing developers, which ultimately isn’t healthy for the general future of the software.
Branding can be used to provide awareness back to the software. There are enough different solutions out there, which means Habari needs to distinguish itself somehow. Having a beautiful logo will entice people to put it onto their sites as a badge of pride and thus provide more widespread awareness back to the software. This of course brings up the whole subjective nature of what makes a beautiful logo. A good logo is memorable and should reflect the values/ideology of that which it is representing. It doesn’t need to SHOUT it’s raison d’etre. I’ve done my part with regards to this so I’ll move on.
Branding isn’t only a logo. Thankfully the admin panel and the code itself has already defined these aspects. Elegance. Simplicity. Modern. Black. Grey. Inventive. ‘Out of the way’. All words to help better define the Habari branding. All elements which should be extended to the rest of the Habari presence online.
Which brings us to the website. This is both our best and worst tool at the moment. When someone types in Habari in google or clicks on any one of the plethora of CMS demo sites, they are taken to the habariproject.org website. That is their first habari experience (after the name).
While you can’t be something to everyone, the website should at the very least try and address the various userbases: hobbyist, developer, designer.
The real shame of it (which is why I’m writing this) is that the site, does the software base a HUGE disfavour. The software and admin is better than that. It deserves better than that. Many times depending on how professionally put together a website appears it will attract or drive away potential users.
At the moment the page doesn’t do a good job of conveying what makes Habari special and better than the other solutions. It doesn’t distinguish itself.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. The problem is, you need a larger user base in order to tackle this. The current documentation is written for developers. The complete novice, or neophyte like myself won’t be able to understand what’s going on most of the time. There is a way to writing good documentation and we need to address this as well. I have a few ideas with regards to this as well (I’ve done this within the company I work for).
How do we entice the young aspiring developers looking to gain some experience to come to us? How do we get the developer who is more familiar with WordPress or Textpattern? How do you get the web designer, who wants a more elegant solution (there’s that word again)? While some of these questions are somewhat answered by the current website, again I feel they’re not presented in the correct manner, but that’s the next post.
I don’t have the power to enforce said changes, so I’ll talk and present my ideas on this site; if they’re employed, then that’s fantastic; but in a year’s time when we’re looking at the same general user base (having not gained much further traction) then maybe some of this will become more important. If not I’d happily eat some claim chowder.
So now that we’ve got ourselves a kick ass logo, now would be a good time to make some badges so that everyone can put them on their websites and you know, spread the word.
In this set you’ll also find a few with Habari written in them.
See how that logo gets integrated? The font used is Gill Sans, which is one of my favourite fonts - you can see it in use on this site. The reason I think it works here is because it’s rounded so it retains an element associated with the logo (the playful nature of the logo), and yet bold and modern (like the software). The package contains:
Logo with Habari These come in two sizes, 460px and 180px widths.
Download entire set.
These will also find a permenant home at www.brokenkode.com/habari .
That’s what my brother said to Yanni last week sometime when we were discussing his online radio station as he was lamenting that not many people were listening to his station. That got me thinking about Habari. It’s been going on for a while now, and yet I don’t feel like the software has hit a critical mass, which is a shame. I think there are several reasons for this, but I’ll start with the first part in trying to help the guys and gals move forward.
I’m not actually surprised that a proper branding and logo were not agreed on, past the h-dumbell thing. Yes, you can kind of see the H in there, and if you really really try (after someone points it out to you) you might see a bell in there as well, but what that doesn’t have much if anything to do with the software, what it does or what it is?
To be completely blunt, from an aesthetic POV it’s not terribly elegant and doesn’t really convey anything about the actual software, the community, etc. That eyesore has to be sorted out for the good of the software (I’ll be going into this in more detail in a future post). Rather than just bitch and moan about something, and not actually do anything about it, I thought I’d take up the challenge. The thing is I did attempt to do this 3 years ago, and I came up with this lovely collection:
Yeah, shut up. I can actually see my thought process, but I guess at the time I was more interested in making something that appealed to the people that had originally started the work (the original Cabal). Thankfully, now I’m just out to make a good logo, that people can use in a plethora of applications, is memorable as the Habari software and is nice enough for me to want to include said mark on my website as well.
Obviously the logo should reflect the software itself, which I have repeatedly been calling it elegant, both in code and in design.
So I sat down at my desk last night, thinking I’ll spend a couple of hours on this tops, and I wrote down:
Then I paused. Why the hell didn’t I think of this before? Habari may by definition be a noun, but it’s also a question. What’s the news? Habari is also the answer, a method to provide the news online. The simplest answers are sometimes staring you in the face. The logo should be the question mark. For some reason I instantly knew how that question mark was to look like, at least in my head, but first I thought I’d try seeing what it looks like with some typical typefaces, Helvetica, Gill Sans etc. This is what it looked like:
Convinced that the actual idea had legs and the more I thought about it the more I was convinced that this as an idea is a good one I started sketching. The thing is I didn’t need to sketch for long, because like I said the second I had the idea, the logo was fully formed in my mind. There would be no harsh lines. The reason for this is because that’s not what Habari is about. It’s about elegance, not sharpness. It does things slightly differently than other to smooth your general experience (this is evident from the installer through to the admin panel and beyond).
So here’s my proposal for the new Habari logo:
I’ve also included this set of iterations, which show the logo in both dark and in light colours, on white and on dark backgrounds. The logo remains distinct in all these incarnations.
This next set shows the logo at different sizes: 100px, 75px, 50px, 25px and 16px - click here for the full size of the image.
There have been other attempts at looking at this in the past, all of which have failed, so I don’t think that this time is going to be any different, because it’s a very touchy subject (which is why it’s not moved forward in 3 years). I don’t really expect anything from this exercise to be honest, except that I for one want to at least know that I tried to help in this regard and gave a viable (and hopefully useful) alternative.
And if anything, it would make an awesome t-shirt as well.
I have a confession to make, I’m partly to blame for the general look of the habariproject.org website look. A while back I basically submitted several options, which the community took up, and basically modified to suit.
Well you knew I was going to get to this at some point. Now that we’ve dealt with the logo, we can start working our branding magic in the most prominent Habari location, the http://habariproject.org website. This is what the current website looks like:
But before we go down that route, lets have a quick look at some of the ‘competitors’ or the other sites that provide blogging solutions, which would entice prospective users and potential developers away.
Expression Engine Textpattern WordPress Chyrp Drupal MovableType
The Complete Gaham Wilson Playboy cartoons preview - In preparation for Fantagraphic’s 3 volume set of cartoons. Here’s the introduction by Neil Gaiman.
For those who know me from my professional life (I’m a Chartered Engineer), know what a complete filing freak I am. All graduates that have helped me out, or that I’ve had anything to do with their training have gone through an induction with regards to how to file things properly. It’s a MASSIVE bug bear with me.
When I had that moment of madness and I moved over to WordPress, what struck me was that Habari’s elegance doesn’t extend to just the admin panel. In Habari it extends to the filing structure, which I really want to shine a bit of a spotlight on, only because I think it’s not generally discussed and I think that the developers deserve mad props for building this elegance in.
There are a couple of things to take from the their structure. The first is the number of files without folders. In Habari, this is a total of 3, in WordPress it’s 23, in Textpattern it’s 4, while in Chyrp it’s 5.
The second thing to pay close attention to is the names chosen for these folders. I know which I feel is the clearest filing structure of those above.
Lets turn our attention to the main menu in Habari. As I mentioned before there has to be a better way than the current method. The reasoning for the current menu is simple, once you start adding all the menu items (including those provided by the various plugin) the list becoming very long indeed. Without any plugin menus this is what is currently there (including one of the expanded menu version):
From my personal use, I only need 8 menu items in total:
For me everything else is completely superflous, or at least it’s bloody rare for me to even go there, like once a year if that (I don’t think I’ve ever gone to the logs and groups menu for example). As I said that’s only because of the way I choose to use Habari. Other users might feel like they want something a bit different, and this type of functionality would allow
The Menu plugin would allow you (in the options page) to hide all the menu items, spare the Dashboard, Options and Logout menu items (for obvious reasons). From then on, it’s open season for you to configure your drop down menu as you wish. This would reduce the need for side menus to pop out. It would also empower the user to customise the menu which would in turn hopefully streamline the workflow, your route from A to B.
The other aspect of this Menu plugin that would also hopefully enhance the experience, would be bringing the shortcut numbers back. In the options menu we would also provide an option to assign the menu option with a keyboard shortcut to a menu item. This way we’d get back to a more streamlined workflow, which is slightly hindered by an additional keyboard stroke (at least in my eyes it is).
While talking with Michael on #irc about the above, one of the things that he brought forward is maybe having an option to expand all the menu items by double clicking ‘Q’ or something like that, which I think is an excellent idea. Also in the options menu apart from just a quick tickbox to see whether or not you want the menu item to be shown or not we might also be able to provide the option to rearrange the menu itself, thus providing further customisation, enhancing elegance.
One of my absolute favourite plugins on Habari is the Publish Quote plugin written by Michael. The plugin has done well by me for like over a year, but in my mind there is some room for slight improvement in the way it operates. Habari does a great job of staying out of your way (as I found out the hard way) and I feel that this plugin is really a direct extension of that, which will make it even easier for you to actually publish your thoughts quicker and faster, ultimately making you blog more.
Currently the plugin works by taking you back to main admin panel with all the various fields filled in (according to your option preferences). There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach. As long as you’re logged in, you have no problems (and seeing as I use the persistence of memory plugin my Scott, I’m ok on that front as well).
The ‘new’ Publish quote plugin would operate in a similar fashion. Clicking the bookmarklet would provide a drop down card which would sit above the page. The card would look like this:
The card has rounded corners (to be consistent with the admin panel) and also includes the slightly greyed rounded box in the top left hand corner around the title of the plugin (more on this below).
After all the whole point of this is to communicate your thoughts and ideas as easily as possible in an enjoyable fashion.
Minimal Design - And here I thought the new ‘Kode was minimal. This site seriously takes it to the next level in certain ways. Might even use his minimal gallery solution.
So I’ve been thinking about the main page for Habari. The current design is an ‘evolution’ of the original designs I proposed a while back. Things have been added, others have been omitted. The guys have moved forward in a fashion that they feel is correct for them. However I think that the main page could do more for the software, and as such I’ve spent an hour coming up with a couple of options.
The main aim of the front page should be to get people excited about the software. It should also be useful to get to the information that you want quickly and without hassle. The main site should also in some way provide a reflection of the ethos and the direction in which the software chooses to take.
While the main page is functional, I feel that there is more that could be done here, so here’s my proposals (hell I’ve even created some html for you to download as well).
In addition to that I’ve
Having said all of that I think there should be further unity between the various areas currently under the Habari banner. Furthermore in rethinking the website
Dear Simon - without a doubt one of the funniest things I’ve read in a really long time. The last pie chart had me on the floor.
KAL’s cartoon - Not sure why it’s called Kal’s cartoon but it’s definitely the best cartoon on climate change I’ve seen in a while.
Genius. It’s a term I reserve to specific people’s work whom I cherish dearly. People like Alan Moore, Salvador Dali, Alphonso Mucha, to name a few. However another name that I have always considered part of that list was Alejandro Jodorowsky.
However I thought I’d write this post to see what else has escaped me.
This is a must read as it’s also with the master Moebius. However I remember reading this as a recoloured book and I thought it was horribly done. So hopefully I’ll be able to find this work as it was originally published. Now the interesting this is that although this was meant to be a trilogy, it does however seem as though there is still more Incal being published with the incredibly talented Jose Ladronn (after working in the general toilet that we collectively know as the American Superhero comic book scene - I love some superhero work, but the good stuff are few and far inbetween). Total of 14 books have been released so far with a 15th coming soon.
Staying in the same universe, we shift to the project that bought me to the attention of Jodo. My first experience of the man’s work was when I think it was Warren Ellis who recommended them long time ago in one of his online posts somewhere. At that time they were still being published in the English language under the American arm of Humanoids Publishing. It was the only work that they published as a comic book and not as an oversized hardcover. Even though it didn’t feel it at the time I think they did me a favour because now I get to read this complete work in the French language.
Juan Gimenez’s work is a HUGE influence on my work at the moment. His work is nothing short of brilliant. His story is completed in 8 glorious volumes. There is also a making of book (which I have and is a brilliant take on the making of this Opus). Again it seems that Jodo has been busy writing more stuff. Again in the form of a prequel - Dayal de Castaka. Total of 9 volumes for this series.
This is a list of the series that I’ve not had a chance to look at, or don’t know anything about.
Visualizing Empires Decline - One of the best visualisations I’ve seen regarding this sort of thing. Interesting to see how bloody large the British Empire actually was. (via Kottke)
In looking around the Habari admin panel I’ve got to thinking which areas are important to me in the way that I use the software and how to take care of those pesky little design issues which I see as glaring mistakes. These are the areas that I feel could use a little bit of design TLC, which basically will give the software that added bit of polish and maintain it’s elegance.
I’m currently in the process of learning PHP, so hopefully in a few month’s time I’ll have hopefully created the plugin to deal with these few issues. If they’re seen as a good idea, then maybe they can be included into the core, but I’m more interested in getting the software to do what I personally would like it to do, good ideas often times find their way back up the trunk. If someone wants to jump in now, I’m not going to stop you, and will gladly help where I can.
When you get into the Dashboard, you currently get a small paragraph above the rest of the cards. This paragraph has some information specifically relating to your site. The issue for me here is that it’s completely out of context with the rest of the admin panel, as it’s the only place where such text exists.
Solution: This information should be collected into another card that sits with the rest of the cards and can be moved around in the same fashion to suit the person’s preferences.
The current implementation of the drop down menu is that a sub-menu item slides out from the side of the main item. This implementation was considered the best option due to the fact that as you add more and more plugins, their menus will increase the main menu greatly, making it too long.
Solution: I would go even more minimalist. As an everyday user, I don’t actually need to have most of these options available on my screen. I don’t need to have:
Personally, the only secondary options that I would like to have are the Options and Plugins (secondary options being New, Manage, Comments and Tags). Other people might have a different approach, but again I would probably argue that every person has got options in that menu which they rarely use.
To that end, I would reinstate the original design of having a sub menu present inline of the main menu item. Within the ‘Option’ page there would be an additional section which would allow the end user to ‘hide’ some of the menu items. The only backend menu items that would be present as a default would be the Dashboard, Options and Logout. You would then reduce the length by 6 lines deep.
It’s been YEARS since I read Animal Farm by George Orwell, so much so that I’d completely forgotten the story. I know it mirrored Communism but couldn’t really remember the details. If you’ve not read it in a while, seriously you’d do yourself a massive favour in rereading it when you’re older because it really does make for better reading with older eyes. Also this time around I’ve got the power of the internet in front of me so the following links can only add to the general enjoyment of the work; comparison chart of the characters and the wikipedia entry.
Gavin Bond Photography - Awesome collection of photos, which also include various TV cast photos (including Entourage, The Office, Scrubs and Lost). And a few pretty funny Bruno ones as well (via Fubiz).
Earlier this month I moved this blog back over to WordPress in an act of madness. I hated it and did little blogging in that time. In considering why I hated the experience at WordPress so much, I came upon an interesting parallel. Habari is to WordPress what Apple is to Microsoft.
One of the things that can be said about Apple when compared to Microsoft is that Apple provides a more elegant computing experience that has been better thought out. In a similar fashion Habari is by far the more elegant product where the details have been sweated out and the experience has been better considered.
As a simple example when you install WP you get a random password in your email box and then the second you log into the panel you get a message asking you to change your password. Why didn’t you let me choose a password during the installation process?
Meanwhile on Habari, the installation is all done on the same page, you insert your preferred password right there.
As another example once you’ve logged into WordPress you’re bomobarded with this clusterfuck of items - TMI (too much information). Yes, i know you can remove most of that stuff (but this is all feeding into my analogy). These items aren’t necessary, they’re added first and you are asked to remove them. It’s like when you buy yourself a Dell PC and get a whole bunch of crapware installed on it, which you can remove (most of the time).
Habari doesn’t have that shit to begin with. These items have not been added from the outset. These things have been considered. And who else do we know that doesn’t like superflous stuff cluttering your view and generally getting in your way? These are just a couple of examples which I might expand upon, because the above is basically the tip of the iceberg.
These are subtle differences but important I think in the final assessment, afterall the devil is in the details.
I can finally start talking about my sabbatical, as last night was the first time I felt slightly restless, which basically means that I’m calm and my brain isn’t being bombarded with work related thoughts. Until 2 weeks into my ‘sabbatical’ I was still having the most boring work dreams you can imagine. I’d wake up with a bit of a smile on my face since I didn’t need to do anything with that dream and my reality was the opposite, for once.
Now I’m back to not remembering my dreams, which means we can hunker down to get some work done. Maybe that’s why I’ve woken up at 5:30, because my body is telling me:
The sabbatical effectively starts today (at least in my mind). There are a couple of things that I’m hoping to achieve in this short period of time that I have in front of me and 6:30 in the morning is a good time to start as any.
After a moment of pure madness, I went back to WordPress, only to find that actually the creature comforts that I had become accustomed to in Habari were not present. It had such a detrimental effect on me that I could even post small links. The bookmarklets didn’t work, the thing felt heavy and I couldn’t wrap my head around the various elements of the code that had passed me by.
I’ll be writing more about Habari in the coming months as there definitely is a lot of work being done, but it just needs a bit of, consolidation of sorts.
If you’re reading this in your feed reader, then have a look at the site, which looks a little bit different, as I’ve also updated to version 9.
I thought that by moving to WordPress, all of my problems would be over. Alas what I found was that the way in which i had become very comfortable blogging was actually completely lost, and the alternative that I forced on myself hadn’t moved things forward but rather moved things back. The only good thing to come out of this brainfart is this latest iteration of this site (if you’re reading it in your RSS reader, have a look at the website proper).
As with the previous version, this one takes things all the way to the very start of Broken Kode as it is inspired by the very first design. This is the only remaining image from back then:
Historically Broken Kode has been a single column site. Every once in a while that has changed in favour of something more complicated, but for the last few years it’s been simplicity over anything else. This latest iteration takes that ethos several steps further as I was absolutely brutal in what I wanted on the page and what had to be hidden.
I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
Love this line, because it’s soo true (at least for me). From an interview with Cormac McCarthy (via the Fireball)
What’s the reason for going back to WordPress? Simply the plugins and documentation available to me to actually do what I need to get done. Yes I could called on the Habari community, but I just want to get on with things. Trying to write something like P2 for Habari is definitely out of my scope of knowledge. I’m not a developer. I’m not even a web designer. This is something of a hobby that I enjoy playing around with. But it should get in my way, and unfortunately due to my inadequacies as a developer Habari was getting in my way. I really really hope that in the future I’ll be able to make a proper and permenant jump over to Habari, but now is not the time (I did attempt it for a year, but my site looked more like it was created in 2006 rather than in 2009).
I am more than happy to play around with this and make it work for me, slowly moulding it and shaping it to what I want it to do, but writing this from scratch would be too much of a pain in my ass.
So here it is, comments are back online (for now) and I’m sure there is going to be a load more things to come in the not too distant future.
R. Kelly - Trapped In The Closet - I’ve not heard of this ‘urban opera’, but seriously this is the funniest shit I’ve seen in a really really long time.
Spiegelman and Mouly Interview - Having just watched comic confidential this afternoon, the timing of this interview is a bit spooky, as I only found out about Raw today. Definitely one for tomorrow morning with my coffee.
List of Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts & Keystrokes - Even though I’ve been on a Mac for nearly 2 years now, I can’t count how many times I’ve looked for how to take a screenshot. Excellent reference site.
Yesterday was the official start of a new comic book project. It’s called Page One Panel 4 (or POP4 for short). The premise is very simple. Every day for an hour you have to draw a panel on an A4 page. The panels on the page have to be equal in area (so you’re not drawing more on any particular day) and you can only spend 1 hour on that panel.
The Men Who Stare At Goats - It’s always an event when you get this calibre of actors all in one movie.
Toy Story 3 trailer - Came out a little while ago, but I’ve been busy with other things. Part of me really wishes they left these characters alone and concentrated on new ideas (like The Incredibles and Up). In Pixar we trust, but is this a missed opportunity or one of those all to rare trilogies that is amazing?
Up In the Air trailer - Juno was one of my favourite movies of last year. Something about the casting, the music, the overall feel of the movie just hit the right notes for me. Is Jason Reitman becoming a favourite of mine (I loved ‘Thank You for Smoking’ as well)?
Although not an immense milestone by most blogs estimation (especially the professional blogs which pay you by the post), I think 1300 posts on ‘Kode is a significant achievement to sit back and take stock of. 1300 posts is roughly 216 posts per year, which is a little over 1 post every two days for the past six years. Truth is, there have been some pretty busy days and some very quiet days (nay months) over the years but overall there has been a consistent output of ideas, thoughts, critism and links over the years.
Even with the rise of twitter, I’ve still managed to keep this website alive. The truth is using it as an extended bookmarking tool has kept it fresh and alive in my mind and effectively kept the site relevant. See many of my recent posts (in the past year or so) could have easily been covered as tweets. The thing is I love my site. I like using it as a tool to communicate my ideas.
However the biggest change I’ve made here this year is removed comments. Comments were really sporadic in general, and the only thing I could count on was bloody spam. Getting rid of the spam has been great, but of course it’s also meant that if in fact I wanted to have a discussion with anyone then it’d have to come from an email, or on twitter.
On the design aspect of things, I’ve never been more happy with the general look of the website than I am now. It’s like 5 years of experimentation have brought me to this site. In many respects it’s as minimal as the very first iteration of the site. The truth is the site doesn’t have any wow factors, no drawings, no clever javascript, nothing of the sort. What it lacks in those bells and whistles, I feel it makes up in form and function. Refined design.
Obviously no idea what the future will hold, but it’ll involve a lot more art coming onto the site. I’ve been drawing more this year than I have,….well ever. Obviously my biggest concern is finding a solution that actually works for me as well as Asaph and Habari have this year.
The Google Story - Great little animation detailing the past 11 years of Google. I still remember the first time I went to Google and who recommended it to me at the time, it was Richard (Burrows) sometime in 1998.
iDon’t - Very funny campaign. Mainly because they just did it in a pokey-funny-jab-way. However my amusement (and that of many others can turn) as there’s NOTHING more annoying than building up hype on the back of shit. That’s the real issue here, is the phone going to be any good?
Peugeot electric car design - I love it when manufacturers take old classics and update them, when it actually works (Mini, Fiat 500, Beetle). This isn’t like that.
Scott McCloud On Criticism - Great idea/thought by Scott regarding criticism. I’ll try and keep this all in mind as I will be putting myself out there for said criticism and to be honest I’ve been know to offer my own harsh brand in the past…
Interview with James Dyson - It’s all about the fan. At $300 for the cheap version it’s pretty expensive, but still it’s an amazing invention.
100 Greatest Hits of Youtube - You’ve definitely seen several of these, now you’ll have seen more of them.
Hellblazer / Shoot - Although I think Warren Ellis is a fat slob of a man, with very very silly hair and a demeanor that makes you want to slap him, his general skill as a writer is actually undeniable (hard as I try). This is from a few years ago and still one of my favourite things he’s written that was never published and made him move away from Hellblazer.
Reading Tray - Always, always wanted something like this. Now if only you could find it in you know shops, I’d be there.
Garfield Widget - Easily the greatest widget ever created. The whole archive of Garfield is there. These strips were meant to be consumed in byte sized chunks, so I’m incredible excited to read a bit of Garfield every day.
Wow, can you believe it’s October already? Seriously where the hell has this year gone already? Yesterday we watched Godfather and ate chocolate santa. Seriously chocolate santas are already in the supermarkets, WTF? The countdown has begun before I move out of Golders Green after 7 years and go on walkabout. Loads of shit to sort out before then, which all basically starts this week as I order by boxes and self storage options and start getting rid of clothes and unwanted stuff that have accumulated over the last few years. It’s not too bad (yeah you might hear me complaining later on this week) but I know I’ve got my work cut out for me.
In other quick and dirty news, we went and saw Joe Sacco at the ICA this week, which was brilliant, since he met everyone later on and did some signings, which was really cool. His latest books sounds like it’s going to be amazing, so I can’t wait (Footnotes from Gaza). We saw a few images and it does look like it’s going to be a keeper.
On a completely separate note, I’m looking for a good font creator/editor for Mac. I’ve not found any that won’t break the bank (I’m looking in your general ugly direction Fontlab). Fontographer is no longer part of macromedia/Adobe, but surely there’s a nice indie developer out there who has made something that can be used to make a font? I refuse to believe there is nothing else out there.
This has got to be the biggest joke. The release date for Up is the 9th of October, while the release date for Ponyo is 10th of February. Seriously, when it comes to movie release dates, there’s an inherit problem with the UK distribution system. How is it that Greece gets Up released before us here? I mean, there’s no need for translating it either (for the kids), it’s all in friggin English!!!
Cairo, a Windows shell alternative - I would have KILLED for this before I moved over to the mighty Mac. Now I don’t imagine a day where I will go back to Microsoft, but this would make it more bearable. Might try it out on my Toshiba Protege that is collecting dust, and sell that sucker on.
DoubleTwist - Sync all of your devices from your mac. This would have been awesome back when I used a Blackberry. Now that the Pre has been announced for the UK, I’m considering it, even though I’m not going to be around for like 6 months at least, and the contract is a minimum of 18 months and 720 pounds poorer. Should I get an iphone 3GS, or wait till the summer and get myself the Pixi, or the new iphone 3GS2? Dilemmas.
Facebook Headquarters - Kinda wonder where they do ANYTHING in there. It looks more like a boutique than an office.
Microsoft courier tablet - I’m actually completely and totally shocked that this is coming from Microsoft. This digital notebook is the kind of thing I’ve been clamouring for, even though I thought it would come in the form of a netbook. If it turns out to become a reality (and keep the slick design) then I might be all over this (even though it’s MS, I’m still shocked that this is supposed to be coming out from them).
ain’t no sleep when you’re living the dream - New blog by Kerry Brown, producer on the new Smashing Pumpkins album. He’s trying to keep it updated every day (not going to happen but the sentiment is nice). Speaking of which…
Avatar Trailer - This is ‘old’ but it’s an important trailer to watch, seeing as how it’s going revolutionize the way cinema is shot and all of that good stuff.
Extreme Makeover Craigslist - From the latest issue of Wired (USA version), Craiglist remade. The standout as you can imagine is KhoI Vinh’s version.
Travel Through Dubai at 818mph - Great trip on the Dubai metro. What’s interesting to me is I was there like a year ago when this wasn’t even close to being completed, so it’s pretty impressive to have it done more or less. Also it gives you a glimpse of what Dubai is and isn’t (I’ll leave you decide what that actually means).
A little over a year ago I wrote this, which basically explained what I wanted to do over the year that passed. What’s funny is that I completely forgot that I wrote that (having a blog for as many years as I do, does make events/posts blend into each other). Anyway 1 year later, I can report that I have definitely been moving in the right direction. The first thing I did was go to an art class at Central St.Martins. While the actual lessons taught me sweet fuck all, I learnt soo much from some of the peeps in the class (ok mainly from Mike) but most importantly I remembered what it was like to feel excited about making comics.
A couple of days ago I finally completed my first full comic book story. It’s a four pager for the Observer competition and it’s basically 2 months of my life. Is two months a lot of time to complete 4 pages? Well I was doing other things inbetween, like working, holidays (where I couldn’t take my art with me) etc. Also bearing in mind that some of the things that I did, I’ve either not done, or not done in a while.
This little experience taught me a lot about how difficult making comics can be, but also how amazing the feeling is when you’ve completed the story that was just a thought in your mind, as you built it, cultivated it, nurtured it, watered it, fed it and then ultimately moulded it.
I did need to take a few shortcuts to achieve the deadline. So I ended up computer colouring and lettering; even though I wanted to do both of these things by hand.
With this project firmly under my belt, it’s time to shift focus to actually start drawing more. However there has to be a deadline. A year deadline is not good enough. It’s too far away. It has to be broken down into smaller chunks. Where I do burn the midnight oil to achieve that goal. Could be 5-10 pages per month? Fully pencilled and inked. That’s a little over a page a week.
The thing is I also want to try my hand at some sci-fi as well. The only way I can think of is, to simply write and draw a panel to this other story every day. 1 small panel. The nice thing about that is that I will end up getting speed and it’ll help me try new styles and new ways of doing something different without it affecting a much larger project. It’s all building towards me having my own distinct voice and style and breaking away from influences.
Either way, it’s all exciting times, especially considering I go on sabbatical for 6 months so I have the chance to pursue all the above.
Obama calling Kanye West a jackass - Sooo funny, soo matter of fact, and soo true. It’s a shame that some idiots will probably take this and make a song and dance of it all.
Smashing Pumpkins dot com | announcement from billy corgan about new smashing pumpkins album
Incredible, amazing, awesome Apple - No wonder everyone feels like they’ve smoked something after watching these keynote speeches. It’s pretty amazing when you see it like this (see what I did there).
Make Photoshop Faster - Does what it says on the tin. Need this now that I’m colouring ‘Coffee Beans’.
Michael Jordan’s Top 23 Moments - The man is a living legend. I guess it was so hard to understand the impact he made on the world of basketball, since that’s what I grew up on. I never knew what was before the Michael Jordan era, and although there have been many pretenders to the throne, they will have to fight very long and very hard to reach his lofty heights.
Renault splits with Briatore and Symonds - Collectively now, FUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!! See I really didn’t see that coming, but damn man that’s some crazy crazy shit going on down in Renault land. They are going to get there asses reamed for this. Getting a driver to crash on purpose, unbelievable. I was actually secretly hoping that Piquet was having one of his special moments of anger and stupidity, but clearly the boy was playing second fiddle in ways I didn’t think were possible.
For those wondering why things have been generally pretty quiet around here, it’s due to the competition which I have been beavering away at. I still have some minor tweaks to make and some additional inking to do, but by and large all 4 pages are done. Just got post production to get on with now, special effects (colouring) and sound effects (lettering). Here are the first two pages inked.
Archinect Interviews Michael Jantzen
Cheese & Burger Society - Oh my god. Seriously, as a burger connoisseur this is my kind of site. Just can’t remember what the actor who’s doing the descriptions is called.
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? - Definitely on my reading list, when I get a chance. Nice Jason Lutes cartoons as well (he of Berlin fame).
Anime All Nighter - Held between the 23rd and 24th of October, this year’s list looks like a pretty solid one. Better grab Jackie and Fern and tell them to book that Saturday/Sunday off.
onedotzero_adventures in motion - Great listing of the upcoming events and screening at the onedotzero ‘festival’. I’m definitely eyeing up to go to the Mary and Max screening.
Open House London - Every year in London, the Open House event happens, where you get to visit different buildings that are usually closed to the public; and every year I end up going NO WHERE. So I think this year will be different, even though it’ll be damn close to the deadline (I’ll have to see how close I am to completing and use this as a treat). Between the 19th and 20th of September.
Baseline - a designer framework by ProjetUrbain.com
Finalists for the 2009 Best Cover of the Year - My favourite is the Obama cover section, and specifically the Rolling Stone cover.
BMW Vision EfficientDynamics - Amazing collection of photos for one of those things I don’t see very often. A BMW concept car (usually the concept cars I’ve seen in the past are from Japan, with the odd concept car from Renault or something like that)…maybe I’m just not looking hard enough?
Conversations with ADD - Free e-book by Alan David Doane, with conversations with a buttload of comic book creators, including Barry Windsor Smith, Seth, Mike Wieringo and loads more.
How to get that perfect shave - Some good tips in there. Like shaving after a shower (or making sure you wash your face in hot water for a few minutes) and the use of a badger brush.
Black Gives Way to Blue - The best news I’ve heard all year. New album from Alice in Chains comes out in September. You can hear the first couple of songs on Spotify now; the two songs that have been released have completely and totally made me have goosebumps.
The Carousel - If you want to know why Mad Men is one of the best shows on TV, have a look at this 3 minute scene from the show. Everything is perfect, from the music to Don’s fantastic voice. What’s special to me is that it obviously makes you remember things from your past. Fantastic television.
Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque - Pictures from the third largest Mosque in the world after Mecca and Madina. I have my views about the type of interiors that have been chosen, specifically the chandeliers, but it’s an impressive looking building nonetheless.
Tour the Bugatti factory, Molsheim - It’s but a glimpse, but a glimpse I’ve never seen before, for the single most expensive supercar manufacturer in the world.
Inglorious Basterds Comics - With the Tarantino dialogue I presume and the EXCELLENT RM Guerra (he of amazing Scalped series from Vertigo). Beware, this isn’t safe for work (I’m linking to Playboy)…yeah I can already hear the comments from Stathi and my brother.
Lemonade - Documentary on some of the 70,000 people who lost their job in this, the latest great recession, within the advertising industry. What’s interesting to me is the fact that due to ‘Mad Men’, I’ve been able to peer into this little industry and the characters inside. The documentary itself looks relatively pedestrian and very, very American but at the same time there is something nice from people that have lost their jobs that move forward to something bigger and better. I know several friends (good and talented) that have had to do this.
Moby Talks About Cartooning and Small Press Comics - Didn’t realise that he actually drew the cover to his latest album, which features that cute little character from some previous singles he’s released.
The man who walked around the world - Although this is an ad, what makes it special, is that it’s a good ad. Not very often that you get Robert Carlyle doing what looks like a one take 6 minute monologue. Either that or there was some serious editing going along here. Either way it’s a great little bit of film.
Usain Bolt runs 100m in 9.58 - The man is INSANEly fast. Hopefully there won’t be a massive doping scandal in 5 years time (I know it’s the cynic in me, but I really am jaded about this stuff nowadays).
Les 24 heures de la bande dessinée (Edition 2009) - Talk about depressing. I mean seriously. Mike and I tried to do 24hour comic book day. We did 17 hours. Mike was getting there, I wasn’t doing it the right way. But the 2009 edition of the series in France brought out the above entries, which is an insane amount of work, by an insane amount of talented people. Flipping through the comics, you’ll see some rare gems.
Scott McCloud Talk - Great presentation by Scott McCloud. I only recently bought ‘Making Comics’ (thanks to Mike) and it blew me away. In this talk Scott covers some of the concepts he describes in the book, but what blew me away was how confident and eloquent a presenter he actually is. I could tell the guy was smart, but it’s one of those few times where I feel completely and utterly schooled in a way I’ve not felt for many many years. Highly recommended watching. (via sidebarnation)
Carlos Latuff - In my research for the story I’m writing and drawing, I’ve inadvertently stumbled on a great political cartoonist from Brazil with the Palestinian cause as his main focus. It’s quite fitting really as I’ve only just discovered Naji Al Ali, who is the prototype Middle Eastern political cartoonist. The great thing about Latuff is that his stuff is seen from ‘Arabic’ eyes with a decidedly more ‘Western’ outlook.
Inventor believes he can solve Lebanon’s energy problem - There’s nothing like being forced to be inventive to stay alive. Innovation is bred of necessity sometimes.
I Can’t Stop Thinking - Collection of appendix comics for Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics book. I’ve not read it, but these strips and his overall style of using the expanded canvas of the internet with a very very long page, is the only comics that I accept to read of the web. All other attempts fall short for me, because they’re basically recycled printed pages tried to be shoehorned into a website. Fail. All these years later, Scott’s work still stands out as the standard; I’ve not stumbled on anything that is as well put together as this.
How Different Groups Spend Their Day - Interactive graph of how people spend their time. Make sure to flip between different groups. Amazing (obviously you wonder how accurate this all can actually be but still).
Design Observer redesigns - This has always been an inspiration in terms of the sheer amount of links offered and the very simple but effective design.
Thundercats Concept Art - What could have been, but sadly, won’t be. Hopefully in the years to come, the powers that be will see sense and make this money making machine!
Gummisig - One of the best looking blog/websites I’ve seen in a good long time. It’s the combination of the colours, gridlines, and big bad bold type that does it for me.
Jamie S. Rich’s Shelf Porn - And here I thought my shelves were a mess. This guy beats everything that I could throw at him.
Fantastic Mr. Fox trailer - First there was Coraline, now there’s this. Two great looking stop-motion animated movies in one year? What are the odds.
Image Comics for October 2009 - This is really for me not to forget. That cover of Proof looks amazing. As does the crazy named ‘Cowboy Ninja Viking’. Too bad the creators seem bad at self promotion. No website with a new section of blog. Seriously guys, that’s one of the easiest things to get nowadays, and it won’t cost you anything. What’s good about creating an awesome bit of work and then only 10 people knowing about it. Sort it out Riley Rossmo.
Schumacher to make F1 return in Spain - Don’t know how I feel about this. Like when Jordan came back twice to the NBA, once you get past the euphoria of how amazing this could be, and the harsh reality sets in. I think it’ll disappoint many but that’s only because I’m a cynical bastard. I do wish he destroys all the whipper snappers, but I don’t see it happening. If he can just trounce Kimi that will be enough for me (lazy Finn).
Urbanization of Dubai - From a series of direct photos from NASA. This is one of the most amazing collection of photos, showing how our world is changing around us.
Wait for Me - Why hasn’t anyone mentioned the new Moby album? Hopefully this will be the soundtrack of the summer for me. I’ve been looking for some inspirational music for a while now. Also I absolutely love the album art. I might even buy this album, even though I’m listening to it for free on Spotify.
Kevin Smith’s Views on Twilight - I don’t get the whole Twilight rubbish, but make sure you watch this clip to the end, classic Smith.
Developer Color Picker - I’ve been using Hex Colour Picker, but I’ll give this a try and see whether it’s any better (love anything Panic are involved with).
SDCC 2009 Eisner Award Winners - I’ve got to say, Chris Ware and James Jean winning another Eisner this year is really starting to show a lack of imagination on the judge’s part (even though I think they’re both extremely talented individuals). Ware has won in excess of 18 Eisners in his career, and Jean has one 6 for the same category.
SDCC 2009 Jim Shooter Talks Gold Key - The addition of Jim Shooter writing Magnus, Solar, Turok is definitely one of the highlights of the San Diego Comic Convention.
SDCC 2009 Marvel Acquires Marvelman - Is this true? I don’t actually know, but I sure as hell hope so, because I’ve heard nothing but great things about this series, and now maybe I might actually get a chance to read it, so will you!!!
SDCC 2009 Dark Horse News - Easily the highlight of the Comicon news for me so far. This press release just made my week.
Bob Schreck Speaks on Move to IDW - First bit of interesting news to come out of SDCC (San Diego Comic Con for the uninitiated). Love this time of year for the news coming out. However it’s been a while since I think SDCC has lived up to my exciting news hungry needs.
SDCC 2009 IDW Panel - Apart from getting a dreamteam lineup of editors (well they’ll be pulling in the talent, you know that for sure), we got:
Comics and graphic novels on the Guardian - Just because I’m not getting enough of my comic book fix these days, my favourite newspaper (I tend to read the Economist these days for actual news, but when I read a newspaper, it’s the Guardian).
The Observer and Random House Graphic Short Story Competition - Definitely going to be entering this year. The only, only thing I need is the story, four pages long.
KA-BLAM Printing - Seems like an interesting POD service tailored for comic book related printing.
Printing your small press comic - If you’re looking to print your comic book.
Bill Moyers interviews David Simon - Fantastic interview which details loads about ‘The Wire’ of course.
Please Love Me - Banksy exhibition near Covent Garden (damn that boy is getting around this summer isn’t he).
David Mazzucchelli at MoCCA - Talking all about Asterios Polyp. Definitely an interview one needs to read after finishing off the book.
Eat Real. Eat Local. - Great little info-animation which probably describes something similar in most western countries around the world.
“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?” Steve Jobs - Great quote, great collection of posters as well.
The Beatles Rockband Absolutely stunning combination of animation and music. Fell of my chair when I saw this (ps the site is pretty awesome as well).
Joe the Barbarian - Never seen or bought anything by Sean Gordon Murphy, but the pages I’ve been seeing from him definitely make him one of those new and upcoming artists to look out for (I really hope I’m right by saying he’s new and isn’t a veteran of like 20 years in the industry or something like that).
BSG Worst Ending in the Sci-Fi History - I’ve not had a chance to read this yet, but this is definitely one of those rants that seem like they are really worth reading, when I’ve got a couple of hours to kill and feeling a bit BSG nostalgic.
LG Chocolate 4th Generation - This is what I had to say when the first generation of the Chocolate phone came out (which reminds me I really need to sort out the formatting in the normal post pages). It’s taken them 3 iterations in total before it became what I originally envisaged the ‘next’ generation of mobile phones to be. Unfortunately for LG they didn’t continue the same design aesthetics that made the first generation phone so successful. This new version looks like it could be a winner. The actual hardware looks absolutely fabulous. My only problem is the software. This may be it’s Achilles heel, as it doesn’t seem as polished as the iphone or even Android.
Definitely worth checking out in the future though, when it eventually lands.
Update: Video has been taken down, probably going to come back in like a month, when LG officially release everything.
In case you’ve not gone out and bought this, you owe it to yourself, really you do. Don’t believe me, here are a couple (one, two) of reviews.
Far Arden - The full graphic novel which got published this week. I was about to pick this up, but I had a few other more pressing purchases to make. After reading the actual history of this book’s creation however I am definitely interested in having a closer look at this. 288 hours, is basically 12 24hour days of comic book creating over the span of a year, creating 288 page graphic novel. In the next year I will definitely be doing a couple of these 24 hour sessions, but using them only as ways to create the basic thumbnails and roughs (maybe even some of the dialogue as well), in order to speed the process.
YouTube - Obama Swats Fly -' I got the sucker'. Old news I know, but I love the concentration on his face before he gets it.
Cannes Design Lions - Awesome collection of great work from the design world. Definitely needs a more detailed look at the entries and the winners.
I read a few things about this a little while ago, but it’s only until I actually saw these amazing images by Richard Wilkinson that I actually decided to go out and investigate further.
Basically ‘Little Brother’ is a creatives commons licesenced book, by Cory Doctorow and apparently it’s pretty damn good (winning awards left right and centre at the moment), with the kicker being you can download it for free and remix it if you want. I’ll be sure to review once I’ve finished reading it.
Google Chrome OS - It’s official. Coming in the winter of 2010 to brighten our days. That’s over a year away really, but still exciting news for operating system enthusiasts.
It’s been nearly 4 1/2 years since comments were officially not part of this site. Back then it was because I couldn’t actually host them on my own site, until of course I moved to WordPress and during the blogging revolution of the early naughties. So what’s changed? Twitter and Facebook. Both of which have brought the internet to the world that hid themselves from it, but they’ve practically killed the blogosphere, or at least how it used to operate.
The funny thing is turning them off was on the cards for a while now. I’ve noticed this downturn for about a year now (probably a few months before I even moved to Habari as my blogging engine of choice).
Does it upset me? I guess it’s a different kind of change. While sometimes I like twitter, there’s too much noise for me on there. Also the fact that everyone only speaks in soundbytes does annoy me. I can’t read people’s thoughts about things because they’re limited and effectively people’s voices on the internet are silenced.
In the meantime I’ll be here writing more than 140 characters and hopefully sharing some good links from around the net. If you want to comment on something, drop me an email or you know…send me reply on twitter (maybe I’ll even integrate that twitter reply thing that Michael is attempting at the moment).
Lone Wolf and Cub Reviewed - Epic series, epic series of posts reviewing every volume, with loads of images and explanations. Excellent work for those who have read and enjoyed the series like I have.
SourceForge Redesigned - Don’t typically go there anymore as I’ve more or less found most of my software requirements in one way or another at the moment, however this was a site I used to visit all the time back when I believe in open source software (but that’s a discussion for another time).
Busiek.com - Beautiful website. Probably one of the best looking comic book creator websites I’ve seen in a really long time. Loads of attention to little details that will make you want to work on your own website.
Elonex eBook reader - Interesting looking ebook reader to rival the Sony version (which IMHO is way to expensive and has an annoying page turning interface).
Google Service Logos - Nice list of the befores and the afters. What’s interesting to me is the sheer number of services that Google actually provides. I’ve probably only heard of like a hand full of these and only ever used 5 of them (but I use them on a daily basis).
Habibi - Production of Craig Thompson’s next book Habibi looks set to be a massive tome, bigger than his previous one.
@font-face: The Potential of Web Typography - Great showcase of what’s to come by using the @font-face rule in CSS. Open this in Firefox 3.5 only. Tried a couple of times in Safari 4, only to have the browser crash on me twice in a row. (via Daring Fireball).
OokahBlog - Pascale’s blog, who’s in my art class (which sadly ends tomorrow evening). So much work seems to go into any one post, but some how it’s a pretty engaging scroll. In a day and age where I can’t be bothered typing out more than a couple of lines, she’s creating montages and cartoons for her posts.
James Stokoe Won Ton Soup - The last time I was actually excited about a new comic book series from Oni was YEARS ago. Don’t know how I missed this, but the title alone just sounds like great fun.
Ekali Houses in Athens - And here I thought contemporary architecture in Athens was pure shit. This is a truly elegant statement. Interesting factoid is the fact that I went to school in Ekali, which was 40 minute drive every day from our house.
le cool magazine - Fantastic newsletter of all the great things going on in your city that you didn’t know about. Well put together, brilliant stuff.
Michael Jackson died today - I’ve got little comment to give on this, past the fact that it’s a bit of a shock and it still hasn’t sunk in;
“Outside the Box” Navigation with jQuery - Although I absolutely LOVE how stacks looks on OS X, I can never get around to using it because I hate the dock at the bottom of my screen. However the implementation onto a website looks so appealing.
Tweak Your Finder - Nice little collection of things to do to make the Finder better. I like the plugin for the quick look in folders.
F1 teams to launch breakaway series - Now this is kind of unexpected. Only because of some of the things that have been said and done in the past.
Node, the power outlet of tomorrow - Always on the lookout for new ways to provide power in my designs, this could be pretty cool, although (and this is where it gets technical), not sure how this would work in Europe without an earth…
Blacksad Gallery - Without a doubt, one of my favourite series, and a huge inspiration for me in the art department. If there is one thing that ‘Aitus Moralis’ is trying to learn is just the general attention to detail that this series claims. The other is the mixture of inks and watercolours onto a page. Truly stunning work that deserves your attention. Book Three is coming out this November (not sure who is going to be publishing it in English though). Here is a review I wrote 2 years ago regarding the first book.
British International Comics Shows - Held in Birmingham on the 3rd and 4th of October. Definitely one for the diary.
Thru eyes frank olinsky - Small Q&A with graphic designer Frank Olinsky, the man responsible for the art direction for the golden era of the Smashing Pumpkins album designs. Yes, of course I have that box set.
Joshua Middleton Website Revamped - Have always loved the man’s minimalist style. If I had a comment, it would be that the blog was actually properly integrated into the site, rather than bringing it in via a frame (or whatever is being used). The gallery section is the place to head first to though, with the ‘Sky Between Branches’ section as the top area to look at (damn that’s been in the making for close to a century).
Mac OS X Snow Leopard - Coming out in September, for $29 (probably £30 in the UK) for a single license, more for the ‘family pack’. I’ve got two macs, does this mean I need to buy the family pack? My understanding is that it’s not actually enforced (through serial numbers) but through the end user’s conscience.
Safari 4 is now out of Beta. And you can definitely tell that they have been listened.
First off the location of the tabs has changed. In the Beta, they were located at the top (like Chrome). It was an interesting experiment that doesn’t fit within the Mac mold. The only way to make the tabs work, is for the top menu to completely disappear. Clearly this was too radical (or cannot be done?) that they’ve opted to put the tabs back to where they have always gone.
The work on the tabs doesn’t stop there however. They’ve gone back to allowing you to select the whole tab rather than a corner to drag them across. That was a function that really pissed me off with the Beta.
It’s definitely MUCH faster. Both at loading and at rendering pages. In fact I’ll go so far as to say it’s giving me the same speed surprise I had when I first ran and installed Google Chrome. Clearly Apple aren’t resting on their laurels. They’ve taken it back to Google who only recently released their Alpha version of Chrome for the Mac.
In Safari 3 I often resorted to hacks to add some much need functionality, such as a bloody tab button. Yeah I know it’s cmd+t but dammit I wanted a button for when I was feeling bloody lazy. Thankfully they’ve brought in a bunch of buttons that can sit in the menu now. Another favourite is removing/adding the bookmarks bar button.
The loading graphic has also changed now. I don’t actually mind this at all. In fact I would go on to say that I actually like this, however I actually liked the previous integration of the blue bar across the entire address book a lot more. Reloading a page is still in the address line; When this was first introduced I was not a fan, however this has grown on me.
Overall impressions is that this feels like the next logical step forward for Safari. The Beta actually for once showed that they are willing to go back on their original ideas and that they do actually listen to user’s opinions, which is always nice.
A guide to 2009s MoCCA Festival debuts - Fantastic run down of all the indie comics that are debuting, or being collected and released this weekend at the MoCCA festival.
Google Holiday Logos - For my own records. My only complaint is that you can’t see all the logos on one page.
Tweeting Too Hard - One of the funniest things I’ve seen on the net in a good long while. That third tweet in this list just cracked me up.
Bleeding Cool by Rich Johnston - A logical step for the man in creating something to hopefully challenge Newsarama for supremacy for all things comic book news.
The art of UP - It’s all in the details, and this gives a small glimpse of that detail. Like they say at Pixar, sand the underside of the drawer.
The Chairs of the Incredibles - The movie I’ve watched the most times in the last few years. Everytime I need inspiration, I usually pop this into the player; and to my amazement, the amount of detail in this movie keeps surprising me everytime I rewatch it.
Thought I’d write down a list of all the areas that this site still needs work on. This is for my own personal use which I’ll be checking back on over the next few months to see what I’ve completed and how long it actually took me to complete.
The great things I’ve found about the current design is that it allows me to get on with just linking to good stuff around the web. It’s not been designed to provide a showcase for my stuff, but that’s going to have to change or at least I’m going to have to think about a way in which I can tweaks things to not feel out of place. Building on the foundations I’ve set up.
Quimby The Mouse Animation - So much fun. I think the combination of the music and the simple animation just really comes out in this inventive little clip. Definitely worth a watch.
Toy Story Teaser Trailer - Pixar doesn’t stop blowing my mind. So simple and yet so effective. Best storytellers of our generation, full stop.
Glastonbury festival lineup 2009 - You know, if you’re interested in live music with the occasional mud-bath.
Ida - Hailed as one of the missing pieces to the puzzle that was eluded by Darwin. Just watching a BBC documentary on this, and it’s definitely something that needs more thought and study.
Sherlock Holmes Trailer - I do love Robert Downey Jr’s career renaissance of late, but I’ve got to say that I’m still not sure about this adaptation of Holmes…something just feels terribly wrong about it. I keep waiting for the voice over person to say ‘Holmes is back and he’s pissed off’.
London Underground Comics Convention - After the ‘comics’ convention this saturday, I’m up for something with less ‘CosPlay’ and more comics. Not many of the names on the exhibitors list jumps out at me, but I’ve got a little time between now and then to get to know who these peeps are, and what their work is like.
Moblin v2.0 Beta - Short for Mobile Linux, this is the OS that has been massaged by Intel to better integrate (and utilise) with their atom processors. Definitely one of the best operating systems I’ve seen for netbooks (apart form OS X). Definitely check out the video to see it in action. Also with a rumored 2 second startup time, this does seem like the way to go for these smaller computers.
Been a while since I’ve written anything significant on the site, but alas I’ve been busy with the task of creating Aitus Moralis. The big significance is that after nearly 6 years of talking about this story, I’ve finally finished the first fully pencilled page of the book. I’ll probably post it at some point once I’ve sorted out the best way to show my artwork in an easy to maintain gallery (I’m leaning to using Google Picasa at this point in time).
This is significant because I’ve managed to do this page of art while working. This kind of dispells the thoughts that i had previously that my brain cannot cope with splitting engineering in the day and artwork in the evening, but actually it can.
The real issue is finding the muse to get on and do it. I found it by going to a course. The energy of the people around me creating artwork was enough for me to actually get on with it and move forward. I’m still learning but if you don’t draw you’ll never learn, you’ll never get any better. Nobody created their masterpiece from day one, or even day two, but you have to start somewhere .
New 9 Trailer - Looks even better than the first trailer and the story is much more apparent to me than in the previous trailer. Reading the first comment though, people laughing at the trailer is just ridiculous; which can only be attributed to people’s complete ignorance and the stereotypes of what animation is and what animation can be - you know who you are.
Wheee! - Part of the promotion in getting Firefox out to everyone, the community was called upon to create some adverts. I’ve never seen this before, but I did get a chuckle, so many years later.
MacFarlane confirms Family Guy Movie - Will he learn from the Simpsons movie? Will he learn from the South Park movie? Is there anything to learn from that piece of shit, or will it also be just a really really long episode?
The League of Moveable Type - Open source fonts. Two out of the three fonts I would gladly use in any project.
Danny Gardner concept spaceship art - Bastard is only 19 years old. How depressing.
Princess and the Frog Trailer - The second movie to come out of Disney under John Lasseter’s directorship (and by that I mean, him being in charge rather than him directing the movies), and this actually looks absolutely stunning. It’s like Disney remembered what is was good at and put it in this movie. This trailer will take you back to when you were a kid.
Scott McCloud Webcomics - It’s been a while since I visited Scott’s website. Not much has changed, but the great thing is the flipping through his online comics, still the ONLY comics that actually were created for the net that actually work for this medium. All alternatives are just trying to shoehorn the rectangular page into a screen, which I have always felt does the experience a great disservice. My favourite is ‘My Obsession with Chess’.
District 9 Trailer (HD) - Interesting trailer. Not sure what to make of it or what the story will be like, but the production values and how they try and make it seem like a documentary put it on my definitely maybe list of movies to go and watch.
Miyazaki’s Ponyo Trailer - The man has never stopped amazing me in the sheer depth of his imagination projected onto the screen. Can’t wait for this movie to come out.
Native Google Chrome for Mac OS X - Still version 0.1, but you can definitely see that it’s still the fastest browser on the market; that and the Omnibar works so much better than anything Apple of Mozilla have created.
The Hunt For Gollum - Fan movie which was released for the Sci Fi festival in London. Seems to be extremely well made, and it’s there for free to watch.
Vertigo Number 1s - A pretty large collection of some of the best comics have to offer, numbers for you to download as pdfs.
Here & There - A horizonless projection in Manhattan. I would really be interested in something like this for London as it really does provide a unique perspective of a city.
Mark Waid Interview - One of my favourite writers being interviewed at AICN. The best are the behind the scenes stories (you never hear about this sort of thing usually, as writers are typically afraid of burning bridges).
Glyphish - What a truly beautiful, simple looking site. Subtle but very well put together. Great set of icons to download as well.
When Worlds Collide - Spock Confronts the Ultimate Challenge. Comic from Paul Pope, to get you in the Star Trek mood, just before the movie comes out.
Tweetie for Mac - Another couple of hours, another twitter application for the Mac. Yeah, sorry Tweetie looks like it just took it all several steps further than everyone else. Check out the video and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Coming out on Monday.
Nambu - Native OS X twitter agent. I thought Destroytwitter would be it for me, but this is definitely the best one so far. A lot of great little features, like tweets and comments back that are threaded, being able to classify people into various groups, and the list goes on.
MacHeist 3 Charity Breakdown - For all the flack that MacHeist gets for being something that rapes the indie developers that contribute their software for such a low price, there is this little element of the whole deal, which somehow doesn’t get a lot of press. Nearly a million dollars donated to charities. When’s the last time that a Windows bundle made money for charity? Seriously. I was a windows boy for years. Not once did i buy a software bundle (does that even exist), and therefore no money ever made it to any charities from that effort.
A message from Billy - Interesting message from Billy Corgan, who is now the only remaining member of the pumpkins. Of interest is the way he’s going to be releasing music from now on. 44 songs over the next several years.
Spotify - A world of music. Instant, simple and free. Finally a way for me to listen to new music, from the 70s. If they can get this onto your phone (ie streaming) then this will be kill all other streams of music (I’m looking at you itunes). But that’s a few years into the future.
Bluebird - Yet another Twitter client. This however looks a little better than Twitterific, which has just stagnated, although not as good as my current twitter client of choice, Destroy Twitter.
Diffuser debacle - I’ve been trying to get to grips with what the deal is with the diffusers. This is the best explanation so far, although to be honest with you, which isn’t saying much since it’s still pretty complicated.
MacHeist 09 - For those in the Mac community, you probably know about MacHeist. I bought last year’s bundle which I believe was a hell of a lot stronger offering than this year’s. Is it me, or is it not selling as quickly as the previous bundle did? I could be wrong, but it seems to be stuck under the $300,000 mark (for charities that is) for the last few days. From all the apps on offer, I only am interested in LittleSnapper and maybe iSale. Apart from that, the rest of the bundle doesn’t particularly interest me (Espresso would be nice, but I already own Coda).
Life can sometimes feel like one big massive MISSED opportunity. Currently that’s all I can think about. Everything that I’ve wanted to do, everything I’ve wanted to have, everything I’ve wanted to be, everyone I’ve wanted to be with. Which decisions were the important ones that got me here. I think about where I am and the road I took to get to this position.
I try to get some sleep but these thoughts keep haunting me; which then reminds me of Bobby Gaylor’s Suicide. My favourite line from that song is definitely ‘sleepless summer nights that seem to go on forever’. I hate those fucking nights. I hate these fucking nights.
I feel like I’m walking underwater most days.
My biggest hate however is thinking like this because I have a lot to be thankful of. I’ve been at a pretty strange place in my head; all I want to do is get over this dark period, however all I can concentrate on is where I missed.
Travis Charest’s Blog - Seems it’s only been up for a little over a month. The good news is that the man seems to be getting more drawing done now than I’ve seen from him in years. The better news is that he’s even more depressingly good than what he was a few years ago. If anything the little Metabaron sabbatical did him some good in honing his already IMMENSE talent. Park this one under easily one of my favourite artists of all time.
A Racing Car Comes To Life - the film tells the story of the RB5 through the car’s experiences so far from factory to track with commentary by Sebastian Vettel. The more I look at this car the more I like it, although I am struggling to understand what the differences between this the Toro Rosso actually are (apart from the engines, one being a Ferrari the other being a Renault).
Chrome Experiments - Crazy stuff that google’s V8 engine allows you to do in Chrome. Not sure how useful, but you know experimentation breeds creativity, which breeds innovation.
Integrity - website broken link checker. Just going through it all right now but damn that’s something I should have downloaded a while ago.
Linux Turns 15 - 15 years ago today, version 1.0 of Linux came out. I used Ubuntu for a year, but the lack of the kind of software that I wanted just wasn’t forthcoming. This isn’t to say that there isn’t great software, just not completely for me. I am happy to see how Linux does see poised to take over the mobile world (who would have thought it) - in the forms of WebOS and Android.
Switch Display Options - Added to my collection of options I might use for my eventual illustrations category on the site.
That’s what I want to be surrounded by right now. Creative brains drawing, sculpting, moulding, painting, etching whatever. Over the years I have definitely understood that your enthusiasm and energy is boosted by those around you. You gravitate to people with positive energy because they make you want to actually get on with life as well. Your surroundings play such an incredible part in this.
For years I have been lamenting the fact that I’ve not been able to get creative with my art. I’ve not been able to nurture the graphic novel that I’ve been writing for nigh on 5 years now. The truth the story is all the better for this incubation time because although the idea was sound (the very basic idea) the execution was lacking.
Yesterday I went and saw a collection of student movies (this isn’t a review of the work that was presented, but more of an observation, when you have no budget, the story has to work cleverly within these constraints - which i don’t feel was captured). The one thing i took from the evening however was the collection of minds in the room and how they all fed off each other.
So I’ve decided (and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier) to try and find a studio to share with a bunch of artists. Now if it was up to me I’d round up the crazy Danes, maybe a couple of Americans get a big warehouse in London on the waterfront and have us create awesome stuff, pushing each other creatively…something which clearly cannot happen.
I’ll be sure to post the results of my research in my hunt for a design studio to get creative in.
Star Trek Trailer 3 - The battle for my favourite movie this year is most definitely on. This of all things might make me into a Star Trek fan…that really does scare me, but seriously, that trailer is immense. Absolutely loved the music and the general look and feel of it. Although having said all of that I bet that Star Trek purist will be outraged, mainly because this movie won’t be Star Trek boring.
Watchmen on CBR - A whole slew of articles and videos covering the Watchmen phenomenon. Clearly Alan Moore' curse or spell didn’t really have any effect on the movie, and by the looks of things it’s going to kick some ass in the box office as well. I just got back from watching it, so there’s bound to be a review of it in due course.
Terminator Salvation Trailer 2 - Oh now that is more like it. Is that NIN in the background?Maybe McG has created something worth watching, as long as I can get the whole Christian Bale outburst thing, I might even enjoy this.
The Cult of Done Manifesto - Brilliant in every way. I also like the posters, which are under a creative commons license, so I might write a quick post of which printers to use to make posters out of these.
Franklyn Trailer - Interesting looking new British sci-fi/fantasy movie that oddly has a very ‘Dark City’ feel to it.
Jon Stewart destroys CNBC - Wait for the last minute. The ending is priceless.
Excessive Celebration Fail - Via one of my favourite website (Failblog) watch this to the very end, there’s a point to his celebrations.
<a href=“http://crackle.com/c/Angel_Of_Death" title=“Angel of Death Ep 1 “Edge” starring Zoe Bell | Crackle”>Angel of Death Debut - From the mind of Ed Brubaker comes this internet series on Crackle. Interesting to see if this format actually has any traction.
Readability - Move all the cruft from websites, so you can just read things. I like it but it’s not completely representative on what is on the page (try it on the ‘Kode to see what I mean).
Apple’s Red-Headed Stepchild - Why do I have a Mac Mini? It’s my entry into the world of the Mac. It took a year before I got a unibody macbook, but that first step was through the mini. It’s a work horse; I am only now thinking of reinstalling the operating system (nearly 1.5 years) after I actually bought the machine (which can be attributed to my meddling with things that I don’t understand). It is weird how long it’s taking Apple to actually update it; maybe there are more people like myself that start on the mini and move to other hardware in the future? Apple does know about all my purchases after all.
Monsters VS Aliens - The animation looks crisp, and from the trailer alone, I think the Blob is easily the breakthrough character.
Safari 4 Beta - Nice to see some good little additions making it into Safari. Now if only they could get the plugin architecture sorted out, it might stand a proper chance at making inroads on Firefox.
Buck Rogers for a Quarter - I have got to give it to Dynamite, even though their logo is terrible and their overall design sense seems lacking, one thing they have got a definite eye for is getting older properties and bringing the right people to breathe some life into them (mainly John Cassaday, but then again, I’d buy Cassaday’s shopping list if he drew it).
Chevereto - Open Source Image hosting script. This looks like a pretty cool idea, however I haven’t had much love playing around with it, as the software hasn’t really been fully translated into English (I don’t know what the interface is like for accessing the uploaded images). Definitely one to watch.
Palm Pre Software Product Manager interviewed - Great little interview with the Palm Pre software product manager. What’s interesting are the potential future products that use WebOS as the software of choice.
Saulius review Pixelmator Sprinkle’s new feature - I’ve been using Pixelmator for nearly a year now and month in an month out the guys have been doing a bang up job of moving the software forward. What’s incredibly pleasing to see is just how far this little application has grown in a year between version 1.0 and the current version 1.4. A great deal of the gripes that I had have been rectified and here’s hoping that the few I have left will be addressed soon (grouping layers and better text control).
Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks - Although pretty minor, what’s great is this small incremental design philosophy that I think I’ve really come to like about OSX. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken. Address things that users are looking for/complaining about (as much as is possible). I guess it’s all down to coming up with a solid foundation and not letting your ideas get the better of you.
Battle for Terra Trailer - Another animated movie I’m looking forward to watching this year.
Christian Bale Goes Bat S**t on Peter Griffin - It never ceases to amaze me how on the pulse Family Guy is with today’s pop culture. These guys never miss a beat.
Sebastian Vettel explains the new F1 cars and rule changes - Easily my favourite part is the explanation of KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System), which up until now I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked (even though Ben, bless him has tried several times to explain it, it would go over my head, every time). (Via Mark)
This was a HUGE Battlestar Galactica Episode. This post is rife with SPOILERS, so if you’ve not seen the episode go somewhere else, nothing to read here.
No Exit answered many questions that have been lingering with most of us for years. As the EW review says, I definitely feel like i’ve deserved this particular episode dammit. I sat through years of BSG goodness, and dammit I wanted some resolution. However this episode didn’t give you everything. It answered (or tried to answer) a number of questions, however these are some of the questions outstanding.
Eventually these guys (over the course of several 1000 years) forgot how to do this, because they didn’t need know. The lingering question remained however was who nuked Earth? Was it themselves? Unfortunately this little interview snippet doesn’t really shed much light on that question. For the sake of argument let’s just say that a war began between the Cylons and Humans from Kobol. The 5 Cylons were warned (through the ‘Head’ characters) and so they went off to stop the same from happening to the rest of the colonies and trying to actually live together in peace.
Update: Alan seems to think that the Cylon Humanoids of the 13th Colony actually created their own servant cyclons and they were the ones that rebelled.
Battlestar Galactica promo - Deadlock - And since we’re talking about BSG, here’s the promo from next week’s episode. Can you imagine the conversation that Sol will have with you-know-who. Awkward. (Obviously don’t go if you’ve not see the final episodes)
Dubai’s six-year building boom grinds to a halt as financial crisis takes hold - The interesting points made, is that even though only about half the projects are still moving forward, this amounts to the same value as the US stimulus package! This doesn’t effect just Dubai but the entire construction industry (which very well may have been overcrowded).
I seem to always reread Sidekicks by J.Torres and Takeshi Miyazawa whenever I come back to Greece. It’s such a well put together book, which I find a crime that it’s not such a massive hit. The last page of the trade (which is the first edition of The Transfer Student) has a great way of ending, which I have always loved.
“Yeah. That’s when it all started.”
Today is not one of those days, but I really want one of those days to come soon.
FAIL Blog - Easily one of my favourite websites at the moment. The humour just appeals to me on such a base level, and the word FAIL is just the perfect way to describe most of this stuff.
First Screenshot of Chrome for the Mac - Easily my favourite app on Windows (after Excel). Although I’ve been using Webkit proper for a week now (much faster), the speed and the general feel of Chrome is exactly what I want in a browser (along with plugins like Firefox). It’s just a matter of time before Chrome becomes a real player.
Inglorious Basterds Trailer - And there you have it. Quentin Tarantino’s 7th movie (if you count Kill Bill as two separate movies).
Rorschachs Mask - Great making of video from the upcoming Watchmen movie. Interesting just how faithful they’ve tried to be down to the inkblots drawn on the mask. Shame that Moore will never see this movie as it’s probably going to be the one that is closest to his vision from all Hollywood adaptations.
The strangest thing has happened after watching Quentin Tarantino’s latest teaser trailer for his forthcoming movie ‘Inglorious Basterds’, he’s made me excited about writing again.
How can a trailer, not even a fully baked one at that make me want to finish what I started? Simple, a few carefully chosen words that appeal to me and stick in my head just captured my imagination. My favourite part is when Pitt steps in closer to the camera and says ' …and I want my scalps'. It’s a line, but it summed up the movie. I love the pause just before the delivery of the line.
I can definitely attest to the fact that writing a script (for whatever medium the script is ultimately used for) is damn difficult. I miss it and I really wish I can keep this enthusiasm up, just enough for me to finish the script that has been gathering dust for the last 5 years.
Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Episode 15 Promo - No Exit - Don’t click on the link if you’ve not seen the latest episodes, because it’s got a pretty major spoiler attached. For all those who have seen the latest episodes, this one promises to be an even better episode that the last two that we’ve just had.
Save bookmark - Such a simple idea, but actually might be useful.
It’s 12:34am and I can’t sleep. I’ve got this uneasy feeling in my chest and I feel like I’m underwater. Random thoughts buzzing in my head as I try and kick them away. Chris Isaak’s Black Flowers playing in the background calms me down, but even that’s not helping me escape the demons of the day that linger in my thoughts, hovering, waiting.
I know something is not right. Like animals that are restless before an earthquake, I lie here waiting for the storm to subside so that I can continue.
In the sky cold air, tears of mine, I am heaven, I am euphoria.
feedly: a magazine-like start page - Easily my favourite Firefox plugin; so much so I’m considering using Firefox as my main browser because of this plugin.
London from above, at night - Unbelievable set of photos from Jason Hawkes. Seeing as there are no mountains in London, you can’t actually see these views except from these photos, which makes them even more special.
Images Reveal McG’s Terminator Salvation Vision - The last time I saw something like this was the production art for ‘The Matrix’. Hopefully the story won’t suck.
Rhino - Easily the standout character from the movie Bolt; Rhino should get his own movie after this. Unlike Scat, this hampster could carry on an hour long movie. Best scene however is definitely:
In anticipation of the new Watchmen movie (hopefully coming to a cinema near you), there is actually a slew of great books on offer to enhance the whole experience. If you’ve not read the source material, SHAME ON YOU. Your homework is to buy the Absolute Edition of this masterpiece and get reading. If you’ve already done that, don’t forget to grab the Dave Gibbons artbook, Watching the Watchmen.
If you are more into movie related books (I personally do like a good one), there is the standard Film companion (which is probably the weakest offering actually) as you can have the Art of the Film which is bound to be more interesting, especially when you get work by such greats as Adam Hughes (who has always been one of my favourite artists of all time). But possibly my favourite tie in book of the entire movie might have to be the Portraits book, which is a collection of black and white photographs taken during the making of the movie.
Don’t forget to read these books while listening to the official soundtrack. Yeah this movie is going to make someone a TON of money, some definitely from me.
Mary & Max - Quirky looking Australian animation (how many of those knocking about) that first appeared at the Sundance film festival. No trailer yet, or release date in the UK.
Planet 51Tease trailer - The little that is shown in this trailer definitely made me smile. Animation looks very crisp, in a Don Bluth kind of way, however its all about the story.
TweetBacks - Great little plugin for WordPress (that will hopefully be making it’s way over to Habari) that bring Tweetbacks. Think of them as trackbacks only made of tweets.
BSG Episode 11 EW Review - Good little write up regarding the Friday episode which kicked off the last of Battlestar Galactica. Spoilers Ahoy, so if you’ve not seen it I suggest you don’t click on that link.
London’s Liverpool Street Station Dance - As guerilla advertising goes this one is definitely one of the best ones I’ve seen in a while.
Catch up with Battlestar Galactica - Good little summary of what’s happened on BSG for last 4 seasons, in preparation for the new episode which aired last night (downloading this as I type this).
For my own reference, the bottom table (can’t remember when I last used a table) is for the dates that the new 2009 F1 cars are launched (including their respective websites).
Carrot Creative - A bit jquery heavy (I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many transitions in one place, but it’s done relatively tactfully.
Durex: Get it On! - Easily one of the rudest but also funniest things I’ve seen all year.
The 2009 Contender - Interesting way to launch the new car from Toyota. I wish they’d sort out the livery on this car because it honestly makes it look worse than it probably is.
Google Search Box - From the creator of Quicksilver, comes Google Search Box. Kinda explains why he was ok about leaving the Quicksilver development; he was working on something better.
Pretty Loaded Museum - Flash animation preloader museum. I know my brother and I have spent AGES creating these things years ago. Not dabbled in Flash for years but it’s a great piece of software, when used correctly, which it seldom is.
Letterman’s Top 10 Bush moments - Absolute genius (via Daring Fireball).
Slumdog Millionaire was released this week and it’s the latest effort form director Danny Boyle. I’d heard literally NOTHING about this movie but I knew from the way that it was being talked about that it might be a pretty good movie. I was wrong. It’s an EXCELLENT movie…see what I did there?
If you’ve not heard about it, starts off with the interrogation/torture of a young man who as we find out quickly is from the slums in Mumbai who manages to gets on the show ‘Who Wants to be a Milliionaire’. The story basically weaves the questions asked on the show with his life spanning across three time periods.
The situations and the character development is incredibly well paced and the story, much like the show keeps you on the edge of your seat. If I had a complaint it’s the fact that the ending that I came up in my head for the movie would have probably made it into more of a classic than it is destined to be.
Palm Pre - Never used anything from Palm so I wouldn’t know what to expect based this their latest attempt at. However early buzz from everyone has put this squarely up against the iphone and actually comes on top in certain areas. Although the form factor is smaller than the iphone in general, it’s also much much thicker as well (which is always an issue for me). Lets see how this effects the smartphone market (hopefully proper competition will force Apple to address simple things like cut and paste).
Scathing review of the Apple keynote speech today at MacWorld - Unfortunately I kind of agree. Although I do like the battery idea, it’s still a battery and I don’t believe a word they’re saying about 8 hours. My macbook is meant to give me 5 hours, but the truth is I can only hope to get 4.5 hours that if I turn the screen brightness right down and do some word processing (something with a white background so I can actually see what I’m doing), so really it’s closer to something between 3.5 - 4 hours of actual productivity.
The above photo Deadlock by David Maitland is without a doubt the best of all the photos in the Wildlife Photography of the Year 2008. I only wish they’d put it in the prints on demand from the shop.
The problem is that 2008 lacked focus for these areas, so it’s time to provide them with a slight bit of structure. I doubt I’ll be able to meet these deadlines, although I might try and attempt to do something about it, the harsh reality is that life will no doubt get in the way; however it’s better to have some structure than none at all.
Compile my Japan photos into a book. I’ve been meaning to do this for over a year. I can’t imagine this taking much of my time, except now that I’ve said that it’s bound to take a great deal of time.
This blasted thing has been waiting to be finished for months. In order to do anything I need to get some discipline. Therefore once a day for 1 hour (be it early in the morning or late at night), I will write for 1 hour. No internet breaks. Coffee break is at the beginning. Nothing but writing.
This is the working title for a little book that myself and Stathi will be working on this year. It’s a very fringe project but I think it could be extremely good fun as we’ve been talking about this for years.
This is something that I hope to get into, although probably the toughest thing to do really, as I’ve not drawn anything properly for nearly a year. Hopefully I won’t suck too much at the beginning to discourage me. The creative process for me is something that is sorely lacking in my life right now. While I don’t want to put something like a number of sketches/drawings per month or per week, I do hope that I surpass last year’s tally, which came to a grand total of zero.
Continued development of the ‘Kode goes without saying. The building blocks for version 8 have been established. I don’t intend to change anything in this design, except enhance it. Add more pages and consolidate the sheer amount of images and work I’ve created these past 6 years. It’s a tall order, but again not really in a rush, as I’ve got loads of other things to keep me occupied. However it’s important to make sure that i don’t let the work here eat into other projects time. Therefore the amount of time I’m allowed to tinker with the site, will again be limited to 1 hour maximum a day. This includes blogging/tweeting time.
CBR Top 100 Comics of 2008 parts 1, 2, 3,4 and 5 - Interesting collection. Don’t agree with everything on the list, I should be publishing my top ten list soonish.
Explore interesting photos from the last 7 days on Flickr - Excellent site feature, don’t know why I’d not heard of this before. Shame I gave up on Flickr sometime last year.
Simple takes time - Jason Santa Maria on design times. I loved the Mark Twain quote, which I’d never heard before, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” So true, as I’ve been struggling the last couple of months to come to a final design for the ‘Kode. As you can probably tell, it’s still not finished.
Judge Dredd movie is go - While I thought the Stallone movie left a lot to be desired, one of the things that I did like about that movie was the sets and some of the props (not all of them). Hopefully DNA will take the good things from that production and actually have a decent story attached to it.
Netbooks compatibility chart - If you’re in the market for a Hackintosh.
Bush getting attacked by shoes - thank god this was caught on video. If only the guy had better aim.
BBC1’s Christmas Indent 2008 - Featuring Wallace and Gromit. Can’t wait for the actual episode that’s supposed to air this Christmas day.
Google Chrome is out of Beta - Gmail takes 5 years to come out of Beta and Chrome takes 100 days? Am I the only one that thinks that’s weird? Surely Chrome would come out of beta once it’s available on the other platforms and has progressed to a solid 1.0 release. Either way, I’m still waiting for this on my mac dammit.
Warren Ellis will be writing for Wired UK - Either one of the smartest moves by this publication or the dumbest thing ever. If Warren’s blog is anything to go by this could be the strangest column ever, on a monthly basis. I wonder if they’ll adopt the same idea or releasing everything online as well.
New Terminator Salvation Trailer - Looks pretty impressive from where I’m sitting and it’s only enhanced by the presence of Christian Bale.
I’ve been on the Mac for a little over a year now, and I’ve been meaning to write about the software that I’ve found invaluable to me. I guess what’s driven it home to me now is the fact that I got a MacBook and I realised which programmes I have become dependant on that I had to have them installed on my new machine.
I guess everything else is just noise that I add in the hope that it’ll be awesome.
Google Friend Connect - Interesting way to enhance blogs and websites to bring more people to interact with each other. Might give it a whirl at some point.
Honda withdraw from F1 - My first impression was ‘oh my fucking god’. But then you put it all into perspective and it just kinda makes sense, although I really thought that Renault or more likely Toyota or that silly team Force India would be the ones going the way of the dodo, but not so, Honda are out. Power of Dreams my ass.
New Google Reader theme - and just when I was getting used to Helvetireader and really enjoying it’s minimalist nature, google go and change the goalpost. At least the favicon plugin for Safari still works.
No Caprica on the horizon, maybe - Why oh why did the frakkin' Sci Fi channel have to get a hold of the BSG universe. A more respectable network like HBO would have aired and promoted this show correctly.
utorrent for mac - Is finally out of the dark and into the beta. I’ve been waiting a while for this, as transmission has a very unhelpful bug in that it hogs all the modem’s bandwidth completely whether it’s using it or not.
Astro Boy Trailer at Moviefone - Love the music, love the little laugh, hate the fact that we’ve got to wait till October of next year to watch this movie, seriously?
Northlanders Flickr set - Just finished reading the first volume of Northlanders by Brian Wood. Definitely worth checking out.
Dell Mini 9 and 12 now released in cherry red, pretty pink and designs by Tristan Eaton Designs - It’s taken a while but the red one is finally here.
Awesome work from Audrey Kawasaki - I especially like the colour palette that she chooses for her work.
DC Comics February 2009 Solicitations are up - Loads of good stuff. Notably the end of 100 Bullets, Batman Heart of Hush storyline is collected (heard great things about this storyline) and Neil Gaiman’s Batman storyline is here as well.
The Killers on the MTV Music Awards - They should forget doing a video clip, they couldn’t top this off even if they tried.
Yesterday I went to the V&A and saw the talk/interview with Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. I’m not the only one that considers this man a complete genius at what he does and it was an amazing hour. They mainly discussed ‘Lost Girls’, which you would do, as they’ve been working on this for nearly 16 years so it’s definitely something that they are proud of and want to reach as wide an audience as possible.
From the moment I saw Alan standing in the doorway I had this completely dumbstruck face, with this huge smile on my face it actually hurt an hour later. The first thing I noticed was just how tall the man is and then obviously just how much hair he had collected on his face over the years. There was nothing new there however as I’ve seen photos of the main many many times before, however what did completely surprise me was his accent. This incredibly thick accent came out and I was initially taken aback. That initial shock was quickly overtaken by awe again as he started discussing Lost Girls and the process and his marriage to Melinda.
I’ve read countless interviews with Alan Moore, however this was incredible special as he infused humour with his views on everything from pornography to the arts to politics and everything inbetween.
Obviously there was the question regarding the Watchmen trailer, which while was dismissed instantly by the interviewer (who did a very good job I thought) was actually answered by Alan. He did explain that he could never like anything that the creators of the movie were going to do, regardless of who they were. So that’s a good sign that it’s not a personal attack on Zack Snyder but at the same time I did feel a bit sad about how he saw the eventual movie. The people behind the Watchmen movie aren’t doing it because they want to rape the material, but rather because of the love that they have for the source material, which Zack has shown he is capable of treating with a great deal of respect.
Alan did discuss his upcoming book with Steve Moore which is a Dummy’s guide to magic which sounded like good fun but that seems to be a few years away from completion. Nothing was discussed regarding the upcoming ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ with Kevin O’Neill but I’m sure they’ll heavily promote that in the future no doubt.
I do wish I’d asked a question regarding his ‘retirement’ from comics and how I hope apart from the upcoming League book that he’s got other books in the pipeline but unfortunately it seems that his output will be somewhat limited, which while is unfortunate, means I can spend more time completing the holes in my Moore collection, of which there are many.
Just came back from seeing the latest instalment of Bond. The truth is that I actually really enjoyed this movie, for all the reasons that I think a lot of people didn’t enjoy the movie. For me there was only one ‘bollocks’ Bond movie moment (the parachute scene) that made me groan a bit and then the rest of it was just pretty hard hitting action. There is a lot to like in this movie if you’re interested in some Bond character development (so he’s not just a womanising, gin drinking, gadget using, one-liner throwing, 2-D character. What we get here is something more refined, something slightly more believable (as much as that is possible in a Bond movie). There are elements in the story that just don’t really stack up for me. Mainly the water dam plotpoint seemed far too weak a motivation for the ultimate ‘villains’. The scene in Austria was incredibly clever and I thought the execution of that scene was very well done.
Final word, product placement wasn’t as annoying as it is in most other Bond movies. Usually it’s painfully obvious, whereas in this case although there was product placement, it wasn’t as bad as all the good guys drive a BMW and all the bad guys drive a Mercedes.
★ ★ ★ ½ out of ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
New Star Trek trailer - I will say this again, I be shouldn’t excited about this, but damn does that look good. (via Joen)
Together - Interesting little note and file compiling application. Particularly like the web as pdf feature.
Up trailer is erm up - This one definitely looks like it’s going to be one of the Pixar classics (of which Cars, A Bug’s Life and Ratatoullie are not part of that exclusive group).
Gaiman discusses the worlds of Coraline - Great little interview with Neil Gaiman on the upcoming stop-motion 3D movie by Henry Selick.
Latest Watchmen Trailer - No new footage, but at least there is some more dialogue in there. Music by the Muse.
Williams are the first to reveal their new modified wing package to the 2009 regulations - Looks pretty strange. The front wing is much lower and wider, while the back wing is pretty narrow and looks pretty tall.
The art of can throwing - fake or real, it’s all pretty cool either way (via Chris)
Six years ago I went to my dentist in Athens, where she told me that I was probably going to be needing to take my wisdom teeth out. Now obviously this scared the shit out of me, so I promised her that I would definitely come back and we’d get it done. I’m pretty sure she got the message after a couple of years had passed and I’d not turned up.
Went to the surgeon today and guy was very nice, showed me my full face scan, which was pretty cool actually, because by and large my teeth are pretty straight, although I think some of the need a little bit more care. The only fuckers that are completely squiff are the wisdom teeth. These nasty things are actually growing at 90 degrees to my other teeth. What the fuck are those teeth doing? Seriously?
The thing is that you ask anyone who’s actually had the procedure and no one has anything good to say about it. Not a word. It’s all serious horror stories.y.
Six years of grace is a good run I guess, now it’s time to bring on the pain.
Download the Dark Night Screenplay - Easily one of the best movies this year (via Andy Diggle on Twitter).
Sprint Widget Ad Page - Totally captivating page. The design is subtle and the information while not particularly useful, completely enthralling. You get sucked into looking at the various bits of information that is cleanly shown in front of you (via Kottle).
Comica Festival 2008 - Already brought my ticket for Alan Moore and probably going to try and make it to the Alex Maleev talk as well.
Macbook Nano - I’d definitely buy one for £200. I am however starting to sway gradually into getting a Macbook though.
Speaking of Inoue Takehiko - Great little entry from the end of October, where he’s talking about sitting in starbucks sorting out the story for Real #49 and a girl sat next to him while reading Slam Dunk (also an amazing manga that you should be reading). Shame about no RSS feed though.
Chip Kidd Responds to Bat-Manga Controversy - and the make sure to read the followup by Chris on this topic. Seriously don’t people (and I mean the comic blogging community) have better things to discuss? What is this a slow comic week or something?
Eventbox from The Cosmic Machine - A Mac only app, which helps integrate a number of social media networks in one single place.
We’ll see how I get on with this, but whenever I buy something and I have something to say I’ll post it as a quick list. So what was new this week:
Photoshop interface with real world object - Awesome flickr set that also shows how it was done (via Boing Boing)
Broken Kode has finally reached the 1000 posts milestone. It’s taken nearly 5 years to get to this stage (I’ll be celebrating 5 years of the ‘Kode in January) and honestly there have been several times when I’ve considered shutting the blog down and just keeping a few images and a brief note on here, but I just could never do it, it was like shutting down a part of me. One thousand posts, some good, some bad, some controversial, some stupid, some clever, some offensive, some thoughtful, but one thing I’ve always tried to be is honest.
As always thanks for both reading and providing your comments on the site.
Battling Boy by Paul Hope to be made into a film by Plan B (Brad Pitt’s company that doesn’t have a website). I’m happy for Paul, but this is even before he’s released the book, which is coming from First Second. I guess considering the talent involved it’s a safe bet that it’ll be a pretty awesome graphic novel, but as a movie? Hollywood is weird.
Fedora 10 (Linux distribution) Solar Theme - Although I’m a mac man now, I still do admire the effort that is always going into desktop linux distributions. For a while Ubuntu was the king, however Fedora is definitely pushing the boundaries of good taste with this, their latest offering.
Michael Crichton died today - best known for writing Jurassic Park and creating ER has died of cancer.
4 years ago I woke up to a series of pictures on blogs from around America of people holding up the words ‘We’re Sorry’ on them. I hope that doesn’t happen again tomorrow morning. Don’t fuck this up America. You know what to do.
Interview with Craig Schulz (Charlie’s son) regarding the 20 Peanuts digital shorts that are to be released online. Still haven’t completed reading the first volume of Peanuts, but I’ve got a massive soft spot for the animated series of old.
I was so nervous, I couldn’t sleep last night. Around 4:30 I woke up with the fear that the world, not America (because let’s face it, America doesn’t stick to it’s borders) would have to be subjected to another 4 years of the same shit we’ve all been eating for the past 8 years. After all the American people got it wrong not once but twice, I didn’t have any faith.
And can you blame me? From where I’m sitting those thoughts were completely justified. For the past 8 years it’s been a nation lead by the most moronic, idiotic, stupid, crass, juvenile, uneducated, uncouth, inexplicable, blundering, embarrassing, war-loving, money-grabbing, greedy, son of a bitch this world has ever seen as an elected president. The first time he cheated to get in. The second time he didn’t.
I have yet to meet an American I’ve disliked; the problem being of course that for the past 8 years Bush and his policies have been what America and by association Americans have been judged by. He is after all your biggest ambassador. It’s as if Bush’s mandate was to fuck up the world as good as he can before he left and he’s succeeded in that respect. Please let the door hit you on your way out.
(image lifted from the very talented Patrick Moberg)
I’m writing these words to reflect on how I saw things now in four years time after Obama’s first term in office. Why am I pleasantly excited by Obama? Because he is the complete and exact opposite of everything that George W. Bush is and has stood for. Obama has two brain cells to rub together and then some. The man is clearly a charismatic speaker, however what impresses me about his speeches (and to be fair maybe other presidents before him have done this, I wouldn’t know because I’ve never had the patience nor the inclination to listen to them, ever, because the amount of rubbish that was spewed was far too much for my delicate stomach, but back to my point) is the fact that he speaks to the people with examples. He remembers their names (and there are always several of them in any of his speeches) and the details surrounding their story. It’s a deliberate trick of course, but the fact of the matter is that most politicians can’t pull it off because of their history, because of their age, because of their insincerity. That is why I am most excited at the moment.
So with that, I’ll leave you with two excellent examples of his public speaking. The first was from his address to the democratic party 4 years ago. The second is his victory speech from last night, which has many similarities, but there is a calmness in the second one and a realisation of the hard road ahead of him.
Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb off Heroes - Seems like a bit of a radical knee-jerk reaction. When Lost was in trouble they recruited a comic book writer not got rid of a couple (especially considering the subject matter).
Kevin O’Neill Interview with Gosh Comics - Part one and two in a four part series are online.
New in Pixelmator Tempo - Awesome set of new additions to the image editor that could. I’m especially excited about the text tools because that’s one of the main things that’s keeping me from making the full switch.
Pixorama from eboy - their first book which collects some of the best pixel art this side of an Atari. Wish they did prints instead of posters (more manageable).
Lewis Hamilton is the World Champion of 2008 and he had to work for it till the very last corner. Probably the most tense Grand Prix I’ve ever watched. Thank god we don’t have to endure the ITV coverage ever again. No more bollocks from Louise Goodman, Ted Kravitz or Mark Blundel. Hopefully the Beeb will get Martin Brundle over to new show and maybe grab Damon Hill in there as well.
Christmas on Mars out on the 11th of November - In production since 2001, and sure to become a cult movie. Clearly both Wagne Coyne and Axel Rose were competing to see who was going to be latest with their respective pet projects.
Chinese Democracy - the new Guns ‘n’ Roses album is out on the 23rd of November. You can get it earlier (from more unscrupulous vendors) this is the internet after all. I’m actually genuinely surprised more people on the blogosphere (well the 200 plus sites that i subscribe to at least) haven’t been talking about this upcoming album that’s been in the making for like 200 years or something. The truth is the album is actually very fucking good.
The art of Pixar - A fan-curated gallery of inspiring artwork, good stuff in there.
Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex out - Exciting times for those on Ubuntu. I sadly moved over to OS X last year after battling for a year to try and make Ubuntu my primary machine. Sadly the ‘nix is just not ready for my needs, however I still like to support the project and Canonical because the thoughts and story behind this effort are to be commended.
Interview with Todd Mcfarlane on Spawn 185 - I haven’t read a Spawn comic in over 100 issues, but I will be buying this as a nostalgia trip, but you only get one shot Todd and I will tell you if it’s bollocks.
If you’re in the UK (and maybe you’ve heard from on far) the ongoing ‘saga’ of the ‘terrible’ affair regarding Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s messages left on Andrew Sachs' answering machine. Here’s the full transcript in case you wanted to have a quick read.
It’s gotten so ridiculous, that the BBC suspended Ross and Brand over the whole event, which obviously led to Brand’s resignation. From my pov, this has definitely been blown completely out of proportion.
Fair enough when there is some serious foul play (money or flat out defamation and lies) but this was obviously a joke, a bad one, but still a joke. Have we really gone so back that it’s not possible to say anything without fearing hurting anyone and everyone’s sensibility? Comedy is always at it’s best when it’s left to push slightly far. I’m not saying in this fashion but slap down the highest paid presenter in BBC history sends a clear message for everyone else, which basically means sugar coat everything and feed everyone non-offensive shit.
Electric Sheep Magazine - One of the most original internet magazines (not blogs) I’ve seen in a good while revolving around film and cinema.
EW on what’s wrong with Heroes - You’d think I would love a show like Heroes right? I only watch it because more superior shows are over (The Wire, Sopranos) or not on the net (Battlestar Galactica, Lost). Heroes has always had hammy acting and generally lamish storylines; they’ve just gotten even worse. But this is no where near the fall from grace that ‘Prison Break’ has endured this season. I think I’m going to start watching movies again.
Typeface.js - Great little alternative to sIFR (which I’ve never really used). The implementation on this seems very welcome and definitely something I’ll look into for use on the site.
They’re all wrong. Everyone that’s perplexed as to whether or not the new Dell Mini Inspiron 12 is a netbook or not have fundamentally misunderstood what defines a Netbook, while for once Dell seems to have a complete understanding of the concept. What impresses me about Dell is the fact that they’ve done this better than any of the other manufacturers that have jumped onto this bandwagon; and seeing as only Apple and Sony not having joined in on the fun, that’s basically every manufacturer of a computers out there.
A Netbook encompasses a range of concepts for a computer to be classified in this manner:
This is the “acid test”. Is the netbook light? Can you imagine carrying it around all day? Is it around 1kg? if it’s much heavier than 1kg, is it slightly larger and therefore distributes the weight more? Remember the Macbook Air is heavier than all the netbooks but due to the weight distribution it feels lighter. 12inch is the absolute maximum you can go up to, 9inch is the minimum that you can use without it being bloody annoying. 7inch models are basically too small for anything apart from checking some emails.
The ultimate specifications of the netbooks is pretty irrelevant. It seems that Intel had brought netbook.com but now it just redirects you to the Intel website. i guess it’s because they realised hopefully that a netbook isn’t a netbook because it’s got an Atom processor. The fact that most of them do again is irrelevant. It’s a nacesent category. The other players haven’t jumped into the ring. They’re still waiting to see if this is all going to fade away. The power associated with a netbook is meant to provide you with the power that is needed to perform the tasks that one would expect from a netbook. I wouldn’t be wanting to render any images, nor do any serious graphic work, nor watch a movie. I’m using this for web surfing, for emailing, for having a look at a couple of pdfs and doing web related stuff. Anything else is noise.
The processor should hopefully reduce the power consumption to a minimum and allows the software to load quickly. I am still waiting for the software to be integrated so much that the waiting is non existant, however that will probably come in time.
The major concept behind a netbook that is common however to all is the fact that a netbook gets rid of bloat and unwanted items. It strips the computer down to it’s bare. No optical drive is a critical one, because that goes against the concept. If a computer has an optical drive, it’s not a netbook. Storage is really down to preference i guess. In reality you won’t need to have major storage. 20Gigs should be more than enough. The only reason you’d have more maybe is for all your music if you want to listen while doing your other things - but most of us have ipods right?
Which finally brings me to affordability. This isn’t a primary machine. This is a pretty fundamental concept here. You won’t be using this as your work horse, but rather as your secondary throwaway machine. Therefore you don’t want to be spending too much on this because you can’t really justify the extremely steep expense. There is a cut off on general price, which is why the Air can’t really classify as a netbook, because that machine was built to tackle more than just web based activities.
So why do I think that Dell have understood the market better than Asus, the category generators? The answer is down to simplicity. If you try and get a netbook from Asus, they’ve absolutely swamped the market with no less than 12 different models (and that doesn’t take the XP and Linux variations).
In stark contrast Dell have released their Mini 9 (with an Ubuntu or XP variant) and now the Mini 12. Don’t even get me started on the Swarovski ‘enhanced’ S101 netbook. The industrial design of netbooks should have one and only mantra, KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid.
It’s the form factor relating to what you are ultimately going to use this secondary machine for. Because based on the above, you’re not going to be using it for anything but sitting in the lounge (or the garden) or about town to do simple stuff with a machine that meets your basic needs, rather than all of your needs, and crucially not more.
Dell Mini Inspiron 12 Review - The older brother of the Mini 9 is out in Japan. There are some factual inaccuracies in the review. The size of the actual netbook isn’t 24mm to 21mm but rather 23(.3)mm to 27(.6)mm. Also I’m not sure where they got the $999 pricetag, because it seems that this will actually be more in the $600 region? Better pictures on the Dell Japan website.
If you plan on going to Ronnie Scotts (famous jazz bar in London) there are a couple of things you should be aware of, lest you get upset how the bouncers decide to treat you.
If you follow these brief rules and sit still for 3 hours you should hopefully get through the entire night. Having said that the Yellowjackets yesterday were pretty awesome.
It’s all about the music in there, respect to the musician, respect to those around you that want to appreciate the music without being annoyed.
KEXP Radio - I’ve been hunting for a radio network that actually caters to my tastes for years. These guys seem to have the right idea, especially love the ‘Song of the Day’ podcast. I only wish that their streaming radio also had the song information in itunes, that’s pretty annoying.
Cruz browser - the big difference here is the fact that it’s got an API ready for plugins to be developed and installed. Interview also up on Cult of Mac with the developer.
Design for Obama - Following in the Obama linky love, this is another nice collection of Obama posters.
Full RSS feeds for The Guardian newspaper - Apparently the first major newspaper to provide their content as full RSS feeds. I stopped reading the Guardian about a year ago as the method of distribution (ie the newspaper) didn’t really suit my lifestyle (more of a magazine person, so I now read the Economist every other week), but this might actually get me into reading a little bit more about local British news now (their international coverage has always been rubbish).
Many Tricks - I’ve only been on a mac for a year so you’ll have to excuse me while i compile my indie software developers list of useful apps.
50 Obama posters - I would also add my buddy Joen’s poster in that mix as well, but it seems to be boding well for the future.
Polaroid software - If you’re on a Mac (and I can understand why you wouldn’t be) then Polaroid is an interesting idea for making your old photos interesting again. I do like the shake to develop the pictures feature.
Brokers with hands on their faces blog - I know I shouldn’t laugh, but I couldn’t help it (via subtraction)
Anand Tech reviews the new Macbooks - as always love the size of these reviews. Surprising recommendation, wait till next year’s model.
Google’s Android mobile software platform goes open source - what I hadn’t realised is that it’s actually based on the linux kernel, amongst other things.
JCVD (Jean Claude Van Damme) - New movie in a the ‘Being John Malcovich’ mould, but for some reason it actually looks pretty good…can’t believe I just said that.
Gizmodo is claiming that Apple will no longer be making the Mac Mini anymore - this is a shame because it’s my first (and only) Mac. I have nothing but good things to say about the experience. A relatively inexpensive machine that does exactly what i have asked it to do, for a price that didn’t hurt me.
Or so Paul Boutin will lead you to believe from the latest issue of Wired. In what is clearly blog-bait, Paul does raise some interesting points although I don’t think his thoughts past the fact that blogging has had it’s heyday as we got to know them these last few years are all that poignant to be honest.
He is right that blogging isn’t as prevalent now as it was 4 years ago, but then again, very few things on the internet has got that much of a shelf life. He sites Technorati as a source, to which I say, who the fuck searches Technorati anymore? I mean seriously? I’ve not visited Technorati in like over a year probably, that site died a slow a mostly deserved death years ago (we can talk about the fall of Technorati, but honestly I don’t give a shit).
Which then leads me to his thoughts on what we should do. Go and tweet apparently; write stuff on Facebook and show my photos on Flickr. I think he’s missing the point here. I do all of that (except Flickr, can’t get into that site to be honest); the thing is all of my other outlets are connected to my blog. I post something here, it’s shown on Twitter. My posts show up as notes in Facebook. All of these services have their reasons to exist and provide me with a specific service, but they could never replace my blog.
Many have sited Twitter as the blog assassin. I don’t necessarily agree. It serves an excellent purpose, it really does. The thing is though that Twitter is filled with bollocks, but that’s what it’s meant to be. Intermingled within that bollocks are some pretty cool things for sure and he is right in that the vibrant feel of mirrors blogging four years ago, but its not the only method of expression, it’s but one method.
Is blogging as relevant as it was 4 years ago? No it’s not. Things have changed considerably, the blog isn’t new and fresh, because now it’s an established institution of the internet landscape. If you have a website then you have a blog. Some web magazines are now seen as blogs (like Treehugger), but blogs are the personal sites run by one man or woman, not a collection of writers churning out 30 posts a day.
From my perspective, I have changed the way I use my blog. I’ve given up on services like Magnolia and Delicious. My blog is now my method of actually storing my bookmarks. I have words that I use to ‘tag’ the links and they’re easier to find and manage, this has actually prompted me to writing more (it’s been months and months since I’ve posted this many times in such a short period of time, consistently) but I’m finding that I am enjoying this more than ever.
In a perverse kind of way I am glad that the spotlight is off. It means that I can concentrate on all my thoughts and that eventually the people that comment on my site are either the ones that have been reading for a while and therefore have meaningful contributions or people that have found something useful in their search for other kinds of information.
Blogging was never about being the best and most popular voice on the internet, it’s about freedom of expression to the masses in a way that was never before possible. Saying that blogging is dead is like saying that the written word is dead; if you think like that then I have honestly nothing to say to you.
Apple’s new ‘Get a Mac’ ads that directly address the resent Microsoft ‘I’m a PC’ adverts - Although these ads do feel a bit long in the tooth, the best ones are those that have subtle gestures or facial expressions by the actors.
‘Cat Song’ - New song by Brontosaurus Chorus (by my friend Dom’s band). Which reminds me, I really should have a word with him about that Myspace site.
DC Solicitations for January 2009 are up - As always, all the interesting covers can be found at Elsewhere (powered by Asaph).
Dell Mini Inspiron 9 from Vodaphone - You get the computer for free (saving £299) but then pay £25 a month, for minimum of 24 months. That’s £600 in total. The alternative of course is to buy the laptop and get a Three dongle for £10 and save £60 but of course you’ve got the option to opt out since you’re paying it monthly.
These services providers are seriously raping the customer with these prices. £5 for the 1GB allowance would be the sweet spot as this is a frill item at best. This is in addition to your phone, which in most cases you are paying £20-£35 depending on your tariff.
Also I was worried that Vodaphone would have an exclusive on the fire brick red version of the Dell Mini, so maybe that is something we can look forward to.
So today Morwenna and I went to Regent’s Park for lunch (this year’s autumn has been beyond awesome) and while we’re sitting there in Morwenna’s typical snide way notices a couple running in front of us, and obviously she couldn’t help but notice (and remark) on the fact that this couple had their hands tied to each other, with about half a meter of length, which was odd. As they progressed down the park, we started thinking of reasons why this would happen, were they training, was she training him, he was one step in front of her rather than the other way round etc.
Then they turned the corner and it then became apparent that she was leading him and then we noticed the white stick that he was carrying and it clicked, the man was blind. I just couldn’t help but admire that as a concept of a blind man running and how something like that was not going to stop him from doing what he enjoyed.
Needless to say I have an immense amount of respect and admiration for blind people as going blind is one of my ultimate fears in life, so when I see blind people doing mundane things that you and I take for granted, but which I know is extremely difficult for them, I have even that much more admiration.
While I’m on the topic, last week I noticed a blind woman walking towards me, she would have been in her early 30s, but the thing that I noticed and which I don’t really have an answer to, is just how well dressed she actually was. Colours were coordinated and her whole outfit suited her extremely well. How does a blind person pick out their clothes in the morning? How do they know which items of clothing work well with each other. How do they know what colours are and that blue and green don’t go together?
I know it sounds completely trivial, but it was one of those things that really made me stop and appreciate the senses that I have been gifted with.
The New Adventures of Mr.Stephen Fry - awesome actor who clearly understands good internet marketing.
In case you missed it, Apple released their new line of notebooks earlier this week and as you will imagine it looks like an amazing bit of artwork. As I’m currently in the market for a nice portable computer, of some description I’ve been following the online rumours surrounding this event with a lot of interest, holding my breathe, waiting for the news to come through. Sadly after I play around with one today I can’t bring myself to buy one.
There is no denying that the new Macbooks sport some seriously sexy looking shells and have an awesome glass trackpad (which you need to play with to fully appreciate it’s greatness), however this line of Macbooks are missing something for me and the real reason I’d buy a laptop computer at this time. It’s down to what I ultimately will use the notebook for and that comes down to the form factor.
In this context I’m not looking for a first machine, I bought my mac mini last year and I’ve got say that I’m extremely happy with this machine. I’m not a believer of getting equipment that I will never use it’s fully capacity for which i have paid for. So why would i want a notebook? To actually take it around with me. Isn’t that what laptop computers were originally created for? Apart from price entry, I think the reason why netbooks have taken off as a consumer product is down to the actual weight associated with them, they’re typically a little over or under a kilogram and they deliver minimal power for work on the move, with a decent sized screen and a keyboard.
I like well engineered stuff that is beautiful to look at and beautiful to use. Arguably the new Macbooks fit into that ethos. However the thing that these notebooks don’t address is portability. at a little over 2kg for the lightest Macbook (the plastic version is actually heavier than the aluminium version), the weight factor is out the window. They’ve provided the computer at 13.3 inches which is a good size, but again, I would have preferred to have an even smaller thing that I could lug around with me and not really feel it.
The new notebooks feel more like a primary machine that you have in your house, that give you the option to move about the house, but don’t seem to have the makings of a true road warrior. Maybe if you’ve got a car and using that to move you and your notebook around, but in my city slicker mode, I don’t own a car and it’s me who will be lugging this thing around. As such weight is paramount.
Is it Apple’s fault that their latest notebook offerings don’t actually fit in to what I want? To be fair to Apple they have something that more or less fits in with my ethos, get the Macbook Air, at 1.3kg that more or less addresses my weight issue. The only problem with this is that the Air is £1300. That’s £350 more expensive than an already expensive machine (and I doubt the new Macbook Air actually has the glass trackpad which is many shades of awesome).
Sadly like Gruber says, Apple won’t release a netbook for another few years and when they do it’ll be awesome, but it will have a stripped down OS X and will fit my needs now, in 2 years. So what’s a guy to do? What are the available options?
I could either get a Macbook Air, get a Lenovo S10 when it gets here and Hackintosh it or I could get a Dell Inspiron 9 and Hackintosh that. Arguably the second option is much cheaper (by around £1000).
Wordpress users get treated to a whole new administration panel…again. How long has it been since Happy Cog’s redesign (wasn’t that in March)? The design definitely has a ‘jack of all trades, but master of none’ feel to it - hardly what I’d call elegant.
Web without words is an interesting experimental site. Block out all content form a site, so you can see what the layout looks like as a design exercise. So far it’s done CNN and Yahoo.
Battlestar Galactica season 5 to begin airing on the 16th of January - 11 hours in total of BSG goodness, with a reported 3 (or more) hour finale?? So many levels of awesome.
Wired Youtube Channel - It’s not new but as I’m using the site instead of a delicious alternative (I’ve tried using bookmarking services in the past and I never actually reuse them after I’ve downloaded a link). Like the gadget labs episodes.
Money Shot Archives for the upcoming Kevin Smith ‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno’ movie - very funny webisodes.
The Guardian’s take on what yesterday’s Apple notebook event - I will say that i think Jony Ike definitely looks like he could be a worthy successor to Jobs. Calm, collected, articulate and not annoying.
While we’re on the topic of Obama, great little poster by Jonathan Hoefler - unfortunately only available in the US, as you would expect.
Obama Tax Calculator - Clever way to show what you get from voting for him. The real test will be how much he stays true to his word.
I’m making a collection of links for how you can install OS X on a Lenovo S10 netbook ; you know, in case I decide not to get the uber expensive Macbooks.
Fortune’s round up of apple notebooks from 1989 to 2008 - interesting for those of us who have come late to the Apple game.
The 2008 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion houses the first structure by Frank Gehry in England (engineering by Arup). Highly recommended if you’re in and around London until the 19th of October.
And it seems like I’ve got little less than 4 days to wait for the Apple notebooks to be released. Honestly I have been waiting for this to be announced for like 3 months. Shaaaaa - zaaaaaaaam.
I want myself one of these Dell Mini Inspiron 9’s with OS X on them. The thing is, I don’t want to do any of the hacking, I just want to go to a store tomorrow, walk in and buy the bloody thing. I’d even settle if Apple actually released a friggin netbook, but somehow I seriously doubt that is going to happen. Their ultra portable machine is the Air pure and simple. Anything else is wishful and naive thinking.
Picture of the first Singapore F1 race from last night/afternoon - How the hell he got those Alonso shots I have no idea. Awesome stuff (via Daring Fireball).
Early on Saturday morning, on the 20th of September 2008, Ahmed Abou Alfa drew his last breath. Ahmed was by relation my father’s uncle, however his actions towards myself and towards my father were not the actions of an uncle, they were the actions of a father and a grandfather. For all intents and purposes I lost my real grandfather.
My dad was the first child between the brothers and as such was treated differently because their own children wouldn’t arrive for many more years down the line, so they all saw him as their own son; however no one more so than Ahmed. His love for my father was then directly shown to me in every occasion that I ever saw him.
Not a visit would go by that the entire family wouldn’t be invited to his house. The dining table layered with food for 15 people or something. In my mind his dining table still remains to be the biggest dining table in the world, in part because of it’s size but in most cases because of the superhuman effort that him and his wife Safiyi would go through for us.
My last memory of my grandfather Ahmed was sitting at the last dinner 4 years ago. I was sitting there complaining about the fact that I didn’t like my surname. It meant nothing in Arabic and it sounded stupid in other languages. To this, he gave me a little bit of a chuckle and he said to me
From there he basically started telling me the family history from 400 years ago or something. This was the entire family tree as though he had lived with these people. He knew names, he knew dates, he knew nicknames he knew the reasons and the people involved. He knew all of this and soo much more. A fountain of stories, interesting stories, and he always had a talent at conveying these stories to people. His son Zaher, sat next to me during this 2 hour session. I asked him if he’d heard this story before, to which he replied that this was the first time that he’d heard any of this. If I’m going to be selfish about this I would say that one of the biggest shames of his passing are all the stories that will go untold, all the stories that will go lost in the sands of time.
The last time I talked to him on the phone was also the last time I ever spoke to him. The most softly spoken pleasant human being I’ve ever had the pleasure to have known. Never had I ever heard his voice in anger, never had I heard him being unkind or say an unkind word about anyone. His face was the epitomy of calm and he always had this twinkle in his eye that showed great kindness and interest in anything that anyone told him, I will miss that and so much more.
This has been the hardest post I’ve ever written in the 5 years of blogging. Everytime I write a sentence I’ve been breaking down into tears but I feel that it is important to write these thoughts down, it’s the only way for me.
Ahmed Abou Alfa , a true Historian and the Last Gentleman of Saida.
Sonic Unleashed Trailer - If I still played video games this would probably be top of my list along with Spore. God this takes me back years.
Vettel wins at Monza - Awesome little driver (hey he’s only 21 years old) who thoroughly deserves this win and underlines where he is heading in the future.
I’m here to also confirm what everyone on the blogosphere has been saying, the Genius setting in the new iTunes 8 actually works. Creating playlists from a single song that actually is PERFECT. It’s like listening to the radio but it’s actually all of your tunes, stuff you hadn’t heard in years sometimes that work perfectly with the tune you’re listening to constantly today.
And can I also gush at the visualiser which is an absolute peach, yeah, I think I will a bit.
Today I was reminded that you cannot force design. You cannot force creativity. While thinking of something else the inspiration will strike. From my point of view, whenever I create anything I can actually see the final product in my mind. Sometimes depending on whatever it is that I am doing I will see this picture clearly and I have the necessary tools and skills to achieve that vision, othertimes I can see only my shortcomings…this is probably the norm to be honest.
The site’s design has been building slowly, organically as I got used to the Habari codebase and also what I wanted to do. I pretty much guarantee that the actual colours wil change, however I’ve got an idea in my head that if executed properly could be pretty good fun for me to see and also could be a good note to stop the redesigning of the site for a good long while.
Oh my dear god, why didn’t anyone tell me the colours on the site looked soo drab? I’ve been looking at the site (and the redesign) was done on my mum’s computer which was one of those ultra glossy screened things from HP. Problem is the colours that I see on my screen in London are definitely not the colours that I was seeing in Athens and definitely not the ones that will continue to be used on the site.
Be back in a little while sort this mess out and talk a little bit more about Habari and what would be cool to have.
Condoleezza Rice is in Libya. An historic event to be sure, if it actually means anything for the people in Libya or if this is just all hot air.
Cappuccino Web Framework - Interesting web based framework for developing applications online, one to a look out for in the future.
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Reviewed - Comprehensive review of the Dell Inspiron Mini by Anand Lal Shimpi. Actually makes me think that getting the Dell machine would be better than the Lenovo S9 or S10.
Fancy Zoom for jquery - will probably use this for the projects pages when I get a chance to complete them.
Radiohead animated video winners - Radiohead held a competition for budding animators to create a video to go with a song from in rainbows. Below are the four finalists.
Dell Inspiron 910 has finally been officially released. I’ve been waiting for a netbook for a while, but the truth is at 300 quid, I’m tempted to just wait until the new Macbooks are released, spend an extra 250 quid and get a mac. The killer though is the weight. 2.2kg as opposed to 1.1kg. Then would I go for the Ubuntu flavour or for the Windows XP flavour. While I want to support Ubuntu, it’s not for me, at least not now.
Fair warning - Spoilers abound young ones, spoilers abound.
So I watched the first two episodes of Prison Break last night. With the exception of a few brief moments of brilliance (mainly from Alex Mahone, who continues to be the coolest character of the series) this show has taken the single biggest plunge into ridiculous territory I have EVER seen. After the exceptional first season and the great second series (which remained good until the very last episode), we get the A-Team, minus BA Baracus and the most ridiculous hurried endings to ongoing plot threads I have ever seen. The term lazy writing doesn’t even do what I’m thinking justice because they really showed how much they’ve hacked this concept to bits.
First of all removing all of Michael’s tattoos is a complete joke. Seriously. Not that the tattoos had anything to contribute in the last season, but still it’s such a crock of shit that he got all of those tattoos removed overnight. If only it were that easy.
And then of course there is the whole Sarah is not dead issue. See we had made our peace with the character moving on. No instead they’ve brought her back because her scheduling issues have been sorted out. WTF man? I take solace in the fact that Michael is no longer whispers when he talks…speaking of Whistler, that was quick. I mean seriously he lasted what 2 minutes into the fourth season? His whole international man of mystery routine was far too token.
Sona burnt down? I mean of all the lazy, stupid fucking idiotic plot turns this one really takes the cake. You spend a year watching them trying to break out and the conveniently it burns down and all the inmates escape unscathed and back in the States. You can’t see me now, but I’m rolling my eyes.
And then there was one. T-bag. Easily the character that is going to really have a massive face off with Michael by the end of the season, something tells me that he will come out on top. That or Alex will give himself up (since they killed his family) to take down T-bag. This then lets that idiot Link forgive him or some such rubbish. Hell I’m only watching this now because I enjoyed the first 2 seasons so much. That’s where they should have ended it. Damn you Paul Scheuring, you sold out man. You could have had something great, but instead you extended it into mediocrity.
I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I was even remotely excited about a new application. Chrome definitely fit that bill. For some reason or another I really wanted to test this little application out. I wanted to see if Google had done anything worthy of their name.
I use Google for searching, I use Google as my RSS reader, to store my story online within Google Docs, and obviously I use Gmail and have done for many years now. These things I use on a nearly daily basis (except for Docs). So playing around with a browser from them obviously was somthing I had to try out. If you look around the blogosphere and the net, everyone’s got a friggin opinion about it. Some have decided to take extreme views on the subject, while others are all playing the waiting game to see what the deal actually was with the browser once they had it in their hands. Others still are pretty optimistic about the whole affair.
I’m not new to this new browser game. When Flock was announced a few years ago I was pretty excited about that…until they dropped the ball, added more cruft and shite to the actual browser and well to be honest made it ugly rather than this extremely slick entity that it could have been. With the exception of Safari usage every once in a while, Firefox has been my default browser for years. I used it originally because it was soo ahead of the game when compared to the available products on the market at the time, probably IE6.
So does Chrome give me that same leap? No, of course it doesn’t. It couldn’t because the idea behind Firefox revolutionised the net in many ways. The truth about Chrome is that it does what it says on the tin and it does it well.
So Google is going to be releasing a browser later on today, called Google Chrome. You can also have a look at the comic book that Scott Mcloud did for them, that introduces the browser. And finally you can have a quick look at the first screenshot of the browser. The proof I guess will be in the pudding. Will it load quickly, will it look good on a mac, will it be extensible, will developers actually support it, will it be worth the effort of moving over? Will it, won’t it, guess we’ll find out part of that question in a couple of hours when it’s officially released.
Expect breakages, spills and loads of stupid things to go on the site, for a long while, until I get my freak on and actually get to the bottom of where-ever it is that I want to go. Either way I’m hoping to make something to move past my cables design from a few years back.
Edit 1 - So the colour scheme in my mind has settled down a little. There are three more base colours to come, but really that’s only going to be in full view once I’ve sorted out the artwork that is going to be pasted all over this site (from which those three base colours will come from). I’m still playing around with the typography and trying to see if I’ve missed something fundamental in the last 6 months that I’ve been out of the game. More about that laters I guess.
After nearly 4 years running the Kode on WordPress, I’m making the jump and going to better pastures. The internet in general is not high on my priority list, however I love the Kode and want the best for it, WordPress has not been the best for it for many many moons, which is probably one of the many reasons that the site got a bit left by the wayside.
Expect a little bit of breakage, maybe even come back later for the new RSS feed (which I think will probably be http://brokenkode.com/atom/1), as I transition over to Habari. See you on the other side.
It’s pretty apt that I should be installing and using Habari in September to run the Kode. See I am seeing this month as the start of new beginnings for me. I’ve decided to take a bit of a new lease on life here. A new way of thinking about certain things, and really setting up the next goals for the coming year.
Maybe it’s because of my birthday, maybe it’s becasue I’ve just completed getting my chartership and everything else was put on hold until I had achieved that milestone. Maybe it’s because I decided it’s time to create things again as I miss that buzz, I miss the energy associated with this?
Really it’s a collection of things, you can’t possibly try and have as many irons in the fire as I had at one point and NOT getting completely burned out. Now that life has settled down a bit I can begin to concentrate on building things again. Slowly this time and with a clear goal of where I want to be.
Expect a LOT more opinion in the future, as honestly I’ve gotten to that stage, where I will say exactly what I think and not give a flying fuck. I used to be more raw, but seems I’ve calmed down a bit and I think unless you’re slightly angry creating is just not the same.
Lets see how this goes.
Christian wrote a little post asking why the Habari community was snubbed in the recent Smashing Magazine 10 Weblog Engines Reviewed post.
Why was Habari not included in this list? Well it was included in an honourable list. Instead though they included Joomla and Drupal. All very good applications in their own right, but far too bloated to be considered weblog engines (they’re designed for bigger sites are they not?).
In any case, I feel that the reason why Habari wasn’t included in here is a collection of things, but it is telling. While I wouldn’t go so far and say that Smashing Magazine in the authority of the internet Zeitgeist, I will say that they generally put a lot of effort into their posts and do a certain amount of research, so their not so much dismisal but rather short billing is indicative of where Habari stands right now. The problem is that I don’t think that Habari, the community or software is to blame here; rather I feel it has something to do with the net landscape as we are right now.
You could say that Habari is still pretty young in it’s cycle, however it’s a HELL of a lot more developed than the bit of software called WordPress was when I started using it (version 0.6 I believe). Back then WordPress didn’t have ANY themes. The plugin library was in the single most infant state you could imagine (if you compare it to now). The less we talk about the interface the better (that ship is stll a rudderless pile of shit as they change it more for version 2.7 if the latest betas are to go by, and believe me I don’t care enough to go there anyway). I don’t think the reasons for the lack of credibility can be attributed to the software’s limitations, because if you’re looking for something to post a blog, and enhance your site with any one of the currently available plugins, Habari is a pretty solid foundation that is only moving forward, moving into the future, because honestly all of those other ones that are on the Smashing Magazine post feel like the past.
So what is missing? Blogs are now a standard part of the net landscape. Open source projects are a dime a dozen (hell that list isn’t exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, since it doesn’t include Habari or Chryp, to name a couple). Blogs are not this new and exciting medium that they were 4 years ago. People know about them and have had one at some point in their lives, even the completely tech neophytes out there will have dabbled. The options to create something online are a lot larger than before.
The other thing is that Habari hasn’t had a catalyst that exploded the scene. There was no Moveable Type changing their license rubbish and now back again (or whatever). That was the push that WordPress needed, initially. Right now, work is being done on WordPress but honestly it feels more like a rudderless titanic. Then you’ve got Textpattern….seriously is the project still alive? A while back I heard of a Textpattern fork, not heard anything else about it since then, but then again I’ve not been actively seeking any information so they could have moved forward?
The thing is that to draw people in there has to be some form of marketing push. What I mean by that is the word of mouth about Habari really has to begin in full steam. The great thing is that people are starting to do this, slowly but surely. Michael is talking more about Habari, as is Owen and Chris. Remember those badges that lived on the side of blogs? Remember the ones for Firefox? The thing with those of course is that the actual image usually pretty distinctive. The firefox logo is extremely iconic. Something akin to this would help spread it out again. It could be a community push that al those actively running their sites on Habari should have the badge to wear proudly.
Clearly there are other things that need to be done, however as with the Habari motto, the word really needs to be spread in a number of ways which can only be a good thing for the software and the community.
Trade Paperback List - Awesome resource that seems to be kept up to date (moderately) for trade paperbacks and graphic novels that have been published. Search as a title or from a creator.
Brad Meltzer’s ‘Book of Lies’ Trailer - Oddly enough I am actually intrigued by this. Never read a Brad Meltzer novel, so maybe after Choke I’ll pick this up…speaking of choke.
Making of Dark Horse Comics section. As I’ve been emmersing myself in the comic book world lately, as I truck on with the script that has been on the back burner for 6 years ago (it’s moving along slowly but nicely). This is a great series of making of comics. The nice thing about them is that they show the entire process from script to pencil to ink to colour to lettering.
My focus in the last couple of months has shifted. This is probably the longest I’ve not been creative in the traditional sense of how I would describe being creative. I’ve not been drawing, not been designing (graphics at least), not been creating. Which to me is something really painful. I’ve stripped by involvement online down to an absolute minimum and all of this in the persuit of one thing. Finishing off my script.
This thing has been brewing for YEARS now and has taken more turns than I can imagine, but thankfully the last couple of months have been very productive. I’ve got the first half of the book mapped out and written. The thing is that creating a whole world is extremely hard. Every single character is new, every single setting needs to be described and every word of dialogue is analysed.
In order to help me get into the whole script writing, I’ve had to really emmerse myself in the comic production side of things. I’ve been reading scripts that are within the comic books that I read, I’ve been hunting online for various resources and the one thing that I’ve found is that the actual method is completely unique to every single person. I’m sure there are creators that have got the same method of working as I do, however I’ve not really read anyone’s account of this yet. Mainly I guess because the people that I’ve been reading that write and draw their own stuff have reached that level of craft where they can cut corners.
I’m still learning the track, so there is no corner cutting for me. The great thing about this experience however is that I can see the fruits of my labour slowly evolve. I started off with one page which was incredibly difficult to write (how do you start off your epic after all) before finishing off the first arc. It’s a slow process but ultimately once I’ve got the script in my hand I can then concentrate on the next task of drawing the thing. The plan and I will do EVERYTHING in my power to achieve, is to have my first graphic novel completed by the time I hit my 30th birthday (I turn 29 next week). It doesn’t have to be published, but it definitely has to be completed as one package which I can then start shopping around to see if anyone is interested (I have only two companies that I would consider publishing to, otherwise I think I’ll go down the self publishing route).
My creative energies for the next year are going to be fully dedicated to the story.
Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke trailer - it’s been a while since we got a movie that’s completely insane and has a bit of character (was Fight Club so long ago). Can’t wait for this.
Dell may be officially announcing their netbook next Tuesday. This week we also got to see the really sexy looking Lenovo S9 and S10 netbooks (the only other netbook I would actually consider. Something about the Dell E firebrick red netbook just appeals to me soo much.
See those last 4 letters at the end? Yeah got my confirmation from the IET that my application was accepted for Chartered Engineering status. Those 4 letters are the culmination of 29 years (shy of 1 month) of both studying and working as an engineer.
It’s difficult to describe exactly what it all means consicely unless you’re part of the industry to understand what is expected of you and what you expect of other people that hold that same title, but needless to say I’m seriously happy about it and was one of my two goals that I had to achieve this year. This is partly one of the reasons why I’ve taken a step back from my various online endeavours to persue other things that have/had been put on hold for sometimes years.
Now it’s time to start working for that other thing (hopefully I will be able to talk about that in November sometime).
Interesting article with Terry Hill (chairman of the company I have been working for the past 6 years). The interviewer has tried to capture some of the values, ethos and thought of the company which is nice, but we’re Arupians not Arupites - sort it out :).
Jamie Hewlett animation (based on his Monkey show) celebrating the upcoming Olympics.
Continuing on the Watchmen theme (there’s going to be a lot more of this in the coming months I’m sure) Empire have a breakdown of the new trailer to the graphic novel.
Watchmen Trailer is out; and it’s a complete peach of a trailer. It’s kinda harrowing that Moore isn’t interested in the movie, because if anything Snyder really does seem to have made something special here. ‘Based on the graphic novel illustrated by Dave Gibbons’ - what a shame, Alan Moore’s name should be there as well.
Oh my that is a first. First time in 5 years of blogging that I don’t actually say anything for an entire month. I’ve been busy…if you’ve seen me in the office, you’ll attest to this fact. Thankfully it’s not been just work, as that would make Khaled a pretty dull boy all around….which I hope never to become.
Life has taken over, so much so that my online activities have been curbed to an absolute minimum. So much so that I even got rid of my Blackberry today. I was THIS close to waiting till next week for the new iphone. What made me stop? The reason is pretty simple actually, I’m trying to step away from this constantly connected all the time fashion. It wasn’t doing my psychology much good and I really felt wired all the time, which was a bit much for my sensibilities. There is something called too much information.
Does this mean I’m going to be back online anytime soon? Nah, probably not. I’ve got more important things to do right now. My focus is shifting and I’m actually really ok with that. The main reason for moving offline is to try and concentrate on the script, which has been going slowly but actually very well.
One thing I will say about creating a story, it’s INCREDIBLY difficult to create something cohersive. So much so that I have an even greater appreciation for those people that can come through with their vision and create something that truly is beautiful to behold. I will have some sketches online sometime soon because it’s the story is part of the reason for this haitus. I’m becoming 29 this year and I will have the fucking thing done before that birthday, so that I can actually have a chance of drawing it before I’m 30. Tall order I know, but alas strive for the hard otherwise what’s the point?
I’ve been looking for a good messenger bag for a really, really long time, but there is such a massive gap in the market for men’s bags it’s unreal. Now I think I’ve found something that I would really actually enjoy, this reproduction is pretty damn sweet - now all I need to do is steal $800 for somewhere :).
Continuing my coverage of the last season of Battlestar Galactica, I saw the latest episode ‘Guess what’s coming to dinner’ and all I can say, is that I was absolutely amazed. This is the reason I watch Battlestar Galactica. This is not hyberbole, what I say that this was my favourite Battlestar Galactica episode ever; and here’s why.
Everything in the episode came together as the story actually started moving forward and all the stars and the moons were aligned with all the actors and actresses actually delivering some of the best performances of this exceedingly excellent
That’s two in two movies I’ve watched this year, both of which have been absolutely supreme. So much so I can claim that this one is also in my top ten of the year (the other being Persopolis). Caramel is basically the Lebanese Amelie. Believe me I don’t say such things unless I actually mean them, but everything about this movie was a joy to watch.
The movie is set in Beirut, and considering the times that Lebanon is going through right now, it was extra special for me and heartbreaking at the same time to watch this movie as I got to see more elements of the country and the people celebrated rather than destroyed. What’s even more special to me about this movie is that it portrays the city as something vibrant rather than how it is traditionally shown broken, battered and bombed. It gives it a certain filter and lets it shine slightly. Sure there are times when I felt that it would have been nice to show the city at night, but that’s a minor point and the director Nadine really gives us a Beirut to wonder about.
The story centres around 5 women living and working in Lebanon and how their romantic lives evolve along with the expectations of the world they inhabit and their families and upbringings. The great thing about this movie is that none of the characters are perfect, in fact all of the women are far from perfect, they’re all real and that adds the most amazing layer to the whole story. They each have their own problems and obstacles to overcome which slowly unfold throughout the movie.
My only fear is that people in the Western world may not appreciate some of the situations and customs that inhabit the story. While they’re not crucial to the enjoyment and understanding of the story, it adds a whole other dimension to the story that they are portraying, in a certain way you have to be Lebanese to appreciate that this is actually true and it’s the reality. Specifically the police scene and the hotel scenes. Trust me when I say this, that’s all true, no dramatisation for the movie.
The director Nadine Labaki (who also wrote this) does a masterful job of injecting so much humour and warmth into this movie, which is where the direct comparison to Amelie comes from. It’s been a while since I was given a set of characters that were all likeable and beautiful in their own right. In my view this is probably one of the hardest things to do in a movie and Nadine hit all the correct notes on this front.
One thing I want to comment on is the beauty of the lead actress and fundamentally the sex appeal that she oozes and that is lacking in a lot of American shows that I watch. It struck me as odd that this woman who isn’t stick thin as is required by the 10pounds-added-by-the-camera world that we live in. Sex appeal cannot be brought or added on, it’s just there, in a Marilyn Monroe kind of way.
Finally I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the excellent soundtrack that was chosen and composed by Khaled Mouzanar (whom the director I believe is engaged to, good name btw son) which fits the movie feel to a glove and adds yet another exceptional layer to the movie.
I honestly don’t want to give much more about this movie other than it’s something that people who enjoyed Amelie would find the same kind of magic in this movie.
New extended Batman Trailer. Even better and more polished than the last. It’s got more of Harvey Dent in it and the Joker gets to speak more. Seriously it’s definitely going to be like 1989 all over again with this one. Christopher Nolan is a GENIUS…and I don’t use that term very often.
Went and saw Persepolis on saturday and was completely blown away by the experience, so much so that I definitely put this in the top 10 new movies I’ve seen this year (not that I’ve seen 10 movies this year, but I will by year’s end). The movie expertly depicts the dichotomy of someone from one place trying to find their place in the world. Unfortunately the story is one that people from the Middle East can relate to instantly. I say unfortunately because the situation of people leaving their countries for the haven of somewhere safe is all to much a reality for people in the Middle East. For many of us this is the world. War, civil or otherwise, narrow-mindedness and general stupidity are all part of every day life.
The film is directed by the graphic novelist, Marjane Satrapi and is effectively her story that she wrote and drew about in two books of the same title, Persepolis. The story deals with her life during the Iranian revolution, how it effected her family and the war that came afterwards with Iraq before it starts dealing with life for a woman in Iran.
Visually the movie is one that grabs you. It works so grandly as an animated movie because it doesn’t shoehorn any one actor or actress to the role. It also can do things in a humorous way without making it look slapstick. I suppose that is one of the most perfectly executed elements of the story. It allows humour within a terribly serious topic. Inbetween messages of hardship the story still allows elements of joy to come through.
After the end of the movie, I told Yiota that my mum would love to watch this movie. I think it’s definitely something that all feminists should watch mainly because the women shown in this movie, Marjane Satrapi her mother and grandmother are true representation of modern clever Arab/Persian women. Women that actually struggle and fight within the boundaries that have been set around them.
In story doesn’t show the lead character always in a complete shining light as it does take her through her journey and I’m sure showing things that she’s definitely not proud of but had to show the differences in culture, the difference in why she would go back to Iran, knowing the life that would await her.
I really want to see this movie again because of how it was structured, and it’s been a while since I’ve said that about a movie. For my money this movie gets my recommendation as something you owe it to yourself to watch.
The Slip by NIN. Even better than the Coldplay gesture from last week, NIN release the whole album under a creative commons license. Good days. (via binary bonsai)
I was listening to Gruber’s podcast the other day, and they mentioned the blue screen that appears for Leopard users after an upgrade. They attributed this to a bit of software that might have been installed (can’t remember what the name is) which can get itself installed so that it can be used by another programme, like the Logitec mouse software. Not sure if anyone knows what I’m talking about, but if anyone’s got any links or whatever regarding this could you please drop by and tell me what the deal is, because it’s really annoying to have to wait 10 minutes sometimes for the system to get itself going again. I don’t have a Logitec mouse (although that’s another post for another time) so that’s not the problem.
Apparently it’s RSS Day. For all those people who don’t know what RSS is, it’s the internet’s best kept secret (still amazes me how many people don’t know about this). Go the site and change your internet habits forever.
Coldplay are on the free download bandwagon…but not as committed as Radiohead where. They’re giving away the song ‘Violet Hill’ from their website; actually a pretty decent song as well.
Skine.art is an awesome blog of moleskin contributors from around the world. Of note are some awesome illustrators from Sweden and Brazil.
There is definitely something to be said about a slow burning design. At least from where I’m sitting. I started redesigning the ‘Kode last week but the deal I made with myself was that I would limit myself to doing one small thing every day. One element of the design. Be it the typography, or some colour changes or implementing how the asides look. Nothing drastic, just small increments.
The honest reason for this approach is that my life doesn’t allow me the luxury to come in every single night and just hack away and try and sort the code out test it make sure it’s all pucker both locally and online before I unleash it in one big fell swoop. I’ll average 3 nights a week (usually less) when I’m actually at home at a reasonable time and I guess in part I was also suffering from a bit of design fatigue.
Trying to get to that final result seemed pretty daunting at first. Soo many pages that I want to sort out, so many elements that need to be designed for and implemented that when I’ve tried in the past year to deal with them, I just get overwhelmed and often they just live in an electronic graveyard on my computer.
So my tip for all you hobbiest blog designers that do have a bit of redesign fatigue, I would definitely recommend this approach of breaking the pie into smaller slices. Don’t get too upset if things are not there. Start on a solid foundation (I started from my favourite coding base from a previous design) and add to the design in a slow but controlled and consistent fashion. It might not get there as fast, but you’ll definitely enjoy the process more, at least I can claim that I am enjoying this tweaking a lot more than I’ve ever enjoyed sorting out my site.
Maybe it’s because you’ll have moved the design forward, maybe it’s because there’s something fresh to look at every day, maybe it’s both.
Continuing my illustrators you should look at theme comes the awesome work of Jake Parker. I really like his pen and ink stuff more than his painted work, however both are all shades of great. Definitely going to pick up that little illustrated book of his.
Frakking toasters by Jeanette Atwood is in many ways the best commentary on Battlestar Galactica I’ve ever read (the fact it’s a comic is just icing on the cake for me). Shame there is no RSS link. C’mon Jeanette, sort it out.
Ian Kim based out of LA is definitely a rising talent to watch in the illustration work. His stuff does have that James Jean quality to it.
Found this pretty cool calculator at the WWF site. I’m acting like I need 2.1 Earths to support us, you?
Probably been around for a while, but I’ve never actually used the damn thing, to actually see how ‘green’ I am. The honest truth is I think I’m moderately green, in that I do the bare minimum. I recycle (things that the Council of Barnet will allow me to recycle), never use the tumble dryer, don’t have a car or any other personal means of transport, will walk to many places rather than jump on the bus or whatever.
I’m not very good with plastic bags, which is something I’m going to try and work on. I’d like to be able to get stuff that doesn’t have tonnes of plastic involved, however the reality of the situation is that just about anything I buy from a supermarket is probably covered in plastic, so unless I actually start to complain to the supermarkets to change their packaging there’s little I can do about that.
The thing is that plastics should be fully recyclable as well. I should be able to buy something and do it the Japanese way by making only food stuffs go down the waste disposal and have my paper, plastics, glass and aluminium all taken separately.
So the title of the new X-Files movie was released at the New York Comic Con that was held this past weekend and it’s ‘I want to Believe’. Which alludes in some respect to that poster on Mulder’s wall in the first season…not sure if was on the wall in other seasons as well. The thing is that when I found out about this, my first question was, ‘Does anyone give a shit?’ I was a massive X-files fan for the first 3 or so seasons and then I effectively gave up completely on the show. Apparently it went on for 9 seasons in total and had that movie (which I might have watched, or not,…obviously memorable).
So seriously is this movie something people have been clamouring for? But then again does Hollywood ever give you stuff that you’re clamouring for?
I saw the PATH graphic novel in the comic book store the other day, but the cover design left a lot to be desired from. However I am all over the artwork on the inside. I’ve got to say that those are some of the funkiest character designs I’ve seen in a while and the colour tones that have been chosen for the art really work with the character’s expressions.
For the last Battlestar Galactica season, I’ll be reviewing each episode from this 3rd episode, ‘The ties that Bind’. So if you’ve not seen the episode yet, I suggest you stop reading and come back once you’ve done so. I guess you can consider this your SPOILER WARNING (that’s for the entire post in case you were wondering).
Plot Threads
So Kaylee was the centre of this particular episode and the fact that she found out that her husband, Colenl Tai and Tory are all Cylons and obviously her obvious murder once that toaster kills her after she’s taken the child from her.
It’s a shame that this character died in this fashion, but I guess finally we’re dealing with some proper ramifications in this season. It’s been a pretty slow burner as the first two episodes have been pretty mediocre as far as I’m concerned. Definitely did not provide the correct level of punch that you would expect from a final season. There’s no time for them to frak around with silly exposition. Each episode has to be complete dynamite, seeing as they only have 22 episodes (19 now) to wrap the entire story and tie up all the loose ends…after a fashion of course. I’m sure they’ll leave some questions for the audience to decide for themselves, but my hope is that the major elements are discussed and explained.
Meanwhile, Kera is commanding a ship through space trying to find Earth, while fucking off everyone around and acting like more of a bitch than she normally can be. obviously she’s changed and it’s going to be interesting to see what exactly happened in the 2 months that Kera was away and why she’s acting the way she’s acting, completely spaced out. Is she the last Cylon?
Then you’ve got the Lee Adama thread. obviously they’ve put him in this position seeing as his and kera’s love thing is all but over, and she’s got her mission and Anders has his, he can now do his thing and screw around with Rosaline’s administration and play politician. Out of all the characters on this show, I guess Lee has had the most change than any other character on the show. He’s had the most friends become enemies, enemies become friend type scenarios than anyone else and they’re poised to continue that fine tradition throughout this series as well. Do you get the feeling that he’s hoping to take over as President once Rosaline kicks the bucket?
As if that’s not enough plot threads, you’ve then got the crazy civil war that’s going on with the Cylons. So half want them to get the Diana’s up and running again and the other half want to neuter everyone apart from a specific number of models. I’m not sure where this is going to be honest.
CGI Cylons One thing that i definitely noticed and wish they go back and sort out for the rest of the seasons, is the new look of the kick ass Cylons. The whole chromed goodness is pretty awesome as far as I’m concerned. I used to think that this was one of the weakest aspects of the actual CGI work that BSG elevated but they’ve really brought their game up for this one.
Overall I liked this episode a lot more than the other 2 episodes, however they’re still not giving enough information as I’d like and not progressing certain elements of the story as much as you would hope them to, however looking at the trailer for the next episode, they do seem to be kicking things up to the next gear. Here’s hoping.
Earlier this week I attended a talk with a manufacturer who was giving us a brief rundown of the differences between British/European standards (BS, IEC) and American standards (NEC and NEMA). I came into that talk with a host of mostly founded preconceptions however I left with a changed view for the emerging design philosophies and how certain constraints around you will motivate and influence design.
Preconceptions
I will rightly admit that before this talk my I considered American design over-designed, bloated, over-sized, unrefined (with the exception of somethings of course, this is after all a gross generalisation). The impression I had of American design could be summed up into, BIGGER is better. In fact there was an element of contempt when designing buildings to American standards, because I felt that I was cheating my clients of a superior design due to being constrained by bloated design.
As it turns out I was right, after a fashion. I had considered the reasons but what I hadn’t considered was the added value that could be brought to the table in an attempt to justify the reduction of good design and engineering practices.
External Influences
I don’t want to get into specifics here, but ultimately a lot of gear that I specify for a building is 40-60% larger for a building that is designed to American standards than one that is designed to European standards. The reasoning behind this is partly due to constraints by the standards as set by a bunch of lawyers that have FUCK all understanding of what it is they are lawyering about and thus the end product is already on the back foot in terms of design because the constraint asks for an enclosure (no matter what the inside contains) of a specific size; a one size fits all mentality. The inards are then rated upwards or downwards as required.
The end result is bloated, unrefined engineering/design because of these external constraints. Which does nothing but fuel the fire to preconceptions because they are partly true.
Added Value
You’d think such products would then be pretty hard to sell if their counter parts where that much more supperior right? Well that’s what i thought was well. I thought that the only real reason for going down that route was because it was with stuff that the client or whomever felt comfortable with because that’s all they knew. Maybe as their trusted consultant we should present variations and ideas on this. We are after all engineers that try and push the boundaries and present the best solutions to try and make things run better, provide a more efficient, cost-effective and ultimately greatly design final solution. By their own admission they’re more expensive and bulkier in size.
The guys in America know they can’t compete on physical size and overall design elegance. However one thing that they’ve enhanced (which is where the difference in philosophy comes to play) is the product’s expandability and it’s endurance. The American products will last much longer and take a longer beating because they’ve been designed to do that. They also allow individual components to be augmented within the field. This enables changes and enhancements to a particular component to be done out in the field, sometimes when spares are not readily available or expensive to get.
Therefore these products have their own marketplace outside their origin but it’s really on a case by case basis. For me it was interesting because although I knew the constraints and the reasons what I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the products were not stagnant in their design and just hid behind the standards. They pushed their design boundaries within the set constraints.
I guess the crux of the matter is that no design is better, except when taken into context. People have to be open to bringing in other elements that they may not be familiar with or uncomfortable with in the hopes of creating a better design.
So I woke up this morning and it honestly felt like 10-15 bed-trolls hijacked by body while I slept and preceeded to beat me with the blunt edge of a feather. Every bone in my body was on fire and my head was about to explode. Of course this happened to me a couple of weeks ago, but luckily I actually hauled myself out of bed ready to tackle the day…kind of. Of course what I hadn’t counted on was forgetting my ipod shuffle, until I got to the tube station.
Now this tiny little bit of kit is like an extension of my morning routine. I NEVER leave the house without it. It’s like going out of the house without my keys, wallet, phone and shuffle. Like my day wasn’t going to be hard enough, I had no tunes to pull me through the graveyard shift (post-lunch). What can i say I’m mediterranean, I need a siesta after lunch. trust me I’ve complained several times to get siesta couches, but alas it falls on deaf ears.
This got me thinking to things I’m generally dependant on and that constitute as habits bad or good. My realisation is that I’m a very methodic person, in fact so much so that if the police were tailing me I’d be caught on the second day.
Nothing new to add to the general conversation of redesigned website to be honest just that this is what has been going on with my thought process lately (ok from yesterday). I’ve been sitting on a redesign for the ‘Kode for many months now. It’s been going on for so long that it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about. So much so that I kept flitting back and forth between designs last year in an attempt to get my act together.
However what I’ve gone and done now is gone back to the design I’m most proud of, from both a functional point of view but also from a code base. It’s a solid and relatively light code base which I’m pretty happy with. There are somethings that I know I can do better with however I don’t have the energy to start from scratch and don’t want to dive into someone else’s code really, especially as I want to be able to tweak this to suit my own needs completely.
So I’m going to be tweaking and adding something new to this site every day. Some of the tweaks may be pretty drastic to be honest, while others will be less than obvious. I’ll bring the copy in my static pages up to speed. I’ll sort out some links that are dead. I’ll start to sort out my categories properly and generally bring the design in an evolutionary method to where I want it to be.
I’m through with these drastic redesigns, maybe a slow burn approach will present me with something that I find more enjoyable to use, as my enthusiasm for writing is directly linked to the look of my site. So if you’re reading this on your feed reader, you might want to check the site from time to time to try and spot the differences.
It’s not a question of getting everything right the first time out, it’s a question of slowly evolving and adding and tweaking in a methodical and periodic fashion.
The latest Banksy art is a stonker. I’ve not seen this up close yet, but I’m definitely going to be going down the road and checking it out. One Nation Under CCTV is an awesome feat of getting something done undetected in this city. I get pulled on camera something like 300 times a day! And that is what I love about Banksy, there is a message, which he does in a very funny way and presents some magic, in a ‘how the hell did he do that?’ sort of way.
Awesome.
So last month I (as it turned out) foolishly decided to lend Gordon my camera on his little ‘save the world’ (or at least try and save a small portion of Bangladesh) trip. However unfortunately the camera got stolen right at the end of his trip, so he lost all the photos, which is a real shame, and I lost my camera, which is damn right criminal. However no point in crying over spilt milk, so the hunt is on for a replacement for my point and shoot camera.
I want to take this opportunity to wax lyrically about the fact that my stolen camera was actually an exceptionally good camera. My only complaint with it all was the fact that they’ve got a really shitty proprietary system for moving pictures from the camera rather than a simple USB cable connection into the computer and be done with it, honestly I don’t need more photo applications on my computer, I’ve got like 20 of those, enough already.
It was also pretty unique in many respects as it was one of the few (only?) cameras to actually have two lenses. So you can imagine my disappoint,..nay, disgust at the fact that Kodak no longer make that type of camera..what is this world coming to when you can’t rely on a company to continue developing the thing that makes them stand out from the rest, I ask you?
So the search for something different begins. I think I’ve decided on the camera to go for, specifically the Samsung NV20.
However before I go ahead and buy it I wanted to ask everyone about their thoughts on which camera is the best point and shoot on the market. I looked at the flickr camera list and I’m not so sure about the Canon, seems awefully generic to me. So what do you have as a point and shoot and what do you think about it, or if you’re in the know, what camera should I be looking to buy?
So went to Jongleurs yesterday for part of Reid’s stag-do and I’ve got to say that apart from the compare (is that how you spell compare?) and the last act, the other three were mediocre to bad. The first comedian to come on stage, was mildly amusing but crude as you like, the second guy got confused and decided to do something singing but would mumble his lines when he spoke and didn’t come out very well, by the time the third guy came out we were hoping for someone funny, alas we got death on stage. I’ve never seen that before to be honest. The guy was dying on stage as NOTHING he was saying was striking a real cord with anyone. Also as it happened our table was the lairiest of the bunch (get 15 guys on a stag-do will do that) and having most of his material come off as completely ignorant (there is funny and then there is just plan wrong,…since when were people from Sudan, Asian?).
Thankfully the last guy did save the show slightly and had like 100 or so jokes that he kept rattling on and did a very good job of keeping everyone under control. Which basically made me think about standup comedy in general. The first of which is the fact that it is EXTREMELY difficult to do properly (I knew that was the case, but until I witnessed someone really die on stage I wasn’t clear as to the real extent).
The thing is I’ve been listening to the AWESOME Bugle podcast, which is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a really long time. Different format admittedly, however the point still stands that new comedic talents do exist however sadly they were not at Jongleurs last night (and based on that I’ll probably steer clear of the place and look for my standup fix in other establishments).
In a word, RUBBISH. The newest MacHeist is up and running and basically it’s a really poor showing this time around. See the last time was an AMAZING collection of applications that included Pixelmator and VectorDesigner. This time around you have some of the same applications and a few random new ones as well, but NO killer application.
Don’t get me wrong I REALLY rate Awaken, use it every day, I really like Coversutra, use that every day (tried using Cha-Ching but couldn’t really get to grips with it at all); crucially all three of these applications were in the previous MacHeist that was held not 3 months ago. What is the application in that bundle that would make you excited? Seriously? It’s not there. Unless they start adding some good stuff, there is no way that this Heist will be as good as the previous one and for good reason. Who exactly are they trying to get on board on this?
On a personal note, there is really no application out there that I want, apart from maybe a better FTP application (there are a couple of good ones knocking about but I’ve not decided which one i should go for) and a better torrent client (transmission is doing exactly what I want and the development is constant so hopefully there’ll get some basic UI issues sorted out and add being able to search and add torrents from within the application itself and I won’t need a new torrent client either).
Part of my ‘live a little once a month’, yesterday was Jose Gonzalez live at Shepherd’s Bush. I’ve got to say that I really loved the concert. His voice seriously resonated perfectly in the venue and the atmosphere in there was generally really warm and receptive. There was a completely crazy screamer in the background that was pretty funny (even made Jose stop for a little while and smile just before he was about to play ‘Heartbeats’).
Obviously no gig would be complete with the obligatory annoying assholes that somehow seem to gravitate towards me and mine with some bullshit or other. In this particular case it was this couple; now I’m not a man that condones this type of thing, but if for some reason so bored youths with nothing better to do on a Saturday night want to happy slap a couple with a penchant for checkered shirts and EXTREMELY white teeth, then please by all means go forth an conquer with Uncle Khaled full endorsement and blessing. God those two were fucking annoying. They were sticking their hands in each other’s backsides (read: scratching each other’s arses) and kept kissing each other every time a cord was played….sorry it was annoying seeing as I was trying to maneouvre away from them but once the gig starts and you’re standing, there’s little where to go. Top tip, if it’s a mellow affair, then definitely try and get some seated tickets.
What was also interesting was the fact that support ‘band’, Death Vessel. Never has a name and personal style ever gone in complete and direct CONTRAST to the actual music being played. One guy comes out with his guitar. That was Death Vessel. From the website and from the half garbled name the man in question was Joel Thibodeau, easily one of the softest voices I’ve heard on a man in a really long time…since Puressence I would say. So much so that Lizzy was commenting on what a great voice SHE had….lizzy hadn’t clocked what he looked like and yeah that was a surprise. But the great thing was that by the end of his set he had more people than would normally come up for a support act really listening and generally enjoying themselves. One man, one guitar.
So what was the highlight for me in terms of the main act? Apart from the stonkingly good voice, I personally loved ‘Crossroads’ to be honest. You’d think it was something like ‘Heartbeats’ but nah, it was ‘Crossroads’. Behind Jose was this large canvas that was playing loads of white animations on black and blue backgrounds and the lighting was fairly decent, but nothing to right home about.
Next gig I guess will probably be ‘Radiohead’, bring it on :).
Just got back from a lecture held at the most excellent venue of the IET in Savoy Place just off Embankment tube station where Christian Horner, the team principal of Red Bull Racing gave a pretty good little lecture surrounding F1 in general, his experiences amongst other things.
For me, this was actually the first time I’d ever been to one of the lectures held by the IET. In the past there have been a couple of lectures that I would have wanted to go to but ultimately didn’t have additional interest around me to motivate me to go. It’s like going to watch a movie on your own in many respects. I’ve never been to the movies on my own but I’ve been to lectures or conferences, as it’s usually for something that of my friends I’m the only one that’s mildly interested. Thankfully several other Arupians (he or she who works at Arup) where also pretty keen on hearing what the man had to say.
Of interest is the fact that it takes them 55 lorries to move all their crap across Europe, for the motor home and all the other things. I really enjoyed Horner’s sense of humour which was very well timed, even though he did have a dig at Williams at one point claiming that the team got very lucky for the result in Australia. An interesting thing that came out was you definitely got that feeling that he felt that BMW was the second best team on the track after Ferrari. Another great little story was the fact that Adrian Newey still has the same drawing board he had at Williams and then at Mclaren, which I thought was very cool, much in the same way I use the same pencil that I started drawing with 10 years ago. It was cheap as chips but i can’t work with any other pencil apart from that (I’ve tried, something to do with the overall weight distribution).
Unfortunately there was not that much talk about the cross pollination of technologies between F1 and commercial car manufacturing which was a bit annoying. There was a lot of cynicism (and rightly so) with respect to the bullshit proposals that the FIA have in place to get F1 to become more ‘green’. Yeah whatever the fuck that means in a sport that requires cars to go around a track 56 times burning 2.5kg of fuel every lap (and don’t forget the 55 lorries).
I’ll definitely be on the look out for future lectures. The one that I would have loved to go to was the one held with Jeremy Rushton (the main guy that created Tiddlywiki) something I personally use on a daily basis.
I was thinking about this today and basically, blogging involves removing the additional thoughts that are in your head that take up valuable space. Things that you should think about but not necessarily keep in your brain knocking about. That way it leaves you with more time to do other things, like in my case watch ‘The Wire’ (best police series EVER created) and read a few books (got a couple of reviews for books you really should read) and most importantly for my sanity, create things. That’s when I’m most happy, when I’m creating stuff.
The issue with me is that that part of my brain has been laying dormant as I began thinking and doing a bunch of other things that seriously didn’t really add to my being,…overall…in hindsight and all that. Part of the problem I guess is that I’m not angry enough at stuff, so it’s time to start getting angry again and flex that muscle again. It’s time to start creating again, it’s time to start blogging again, none of this 7 posts a month bullshit.
FontStruct is a website that lets you create fonts using an EXCELLENT flash interface right from within the website. You don’t have to start from scratch as it’s even possible to clone another font that has already been created and modify it to your needs. What I love about all of this is the option to actually control EVERYTHING about an particular project straight away, down to the font. Having created a font years ago, I know how difficult it is to keep your house in order. The interface on FontStruct keeps things organised for you to actually put more effort into the creative process. Now the issue of course is that it might not seem as flexible of being able to come up with any font design you can, but honestly I think for the average hobbyist that might not be an issue really. If you really get into it, then I guess you can start learning how to do it from scratch…although having said that, I have NO IDEA what the standard tool for font creation is nowadays? Font Constructor looks pretty cool. Also there is a pretty extensive list about the different programmes available (even talks about FontStruct).
Elsewhere.brokenkode.com (powered by Asaph) is a an images dumping ground for things that inspire me and has been up and running for a week or so. I’ll hopefully get around to skinning this as well, but I’ve got to say that Dominic really did a good job on this little application and can’t wait to see future iterations.
To the internet. So last week we were offline at casa Khaled. Yes, that’s right, no net access whatsoever. At first I’ve got to admit that I was REALLY angry. Not at anyone but at the situation itself. I mean seriously, my computer felt like it was neutered. I felt completely cut off from the world and all because as it turns out one of the cables coming into the house decided to collapse on itself. Maybe because it finally decided to give up the good fight because of the cold weather? Maybe it was because the workers outside moved it a fraction and it was to frail to deal with it, either way I was cut off.
This has happened before to be honest, however this one I was a bit more composed with the whole thing. I was actually able to deal with a few things that I’ve been meaning to deal with for a while; like do a bit of writing, do a little bit of drawing and generally do a couple of things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. One thing I did miss was this site. I realised that I need this place for venting, something which i’ve been doing a lot less of in recent times. One of the main reasons I continued to blog was because I liked the cathartic process associated with brain dumping, because after all that ALL I’m doing here. Sometimes I rattled a few cages, sometimes I make a couple of people smile, so I think I’ve found that spark that I need to really start making the words on this site start coming alive. So as of tomorrow, you can expect a lot more ‘Kode action coming your way, daily even.
It’s also time I kicked WordPress like a bad habit. Seriously, this shit takes FOREVER to log in. Once you’re in it’s kind of OK, but honestly SLOW as a fat man in water. Some things in 2.5 are nice, but alas I’m thinking too damn little, too damn late, I guess I will write something about it at some point.
For those of you in the dark, Frank Miller (he of 300, Sin City and the Dark Knight Strikes Back fame) will be directing the Spirit movie, in case you missed it. This is based on a great little series that was created by the great Will Eisner. The website is up and they’ve got the first poster up (which I think is BRILLIANT). Love the quote:
Fucking love it. This movie can’t come out soon enough as far as I’m concerned.
So that’s what it was. The Formula One season started off this morning in Melbourne. If you didn’t watch the race, STOP reading now and come back once you’ve watched it. Needless to say it’s a vintage race, one of those races to watch in the future. Right back to everyone else who has watched the race, man that was one of the best races I’ve watched in a really long time. Not only because two of my favourite drivers were on the podium and that Williams is finally getting back up there and mixing it up with everyone else, but also because it seems like this year will be really great fun all the way around. Crucially the thing that has changed and that’s really made the difference to the watch-ability of the races is the fact that traction control has now been removed. What this does is makes it brilliant for people to watch because the drivers no longer have that crutch of a computer sorting things out for them, both at the start of the race but also throughout the race correcting things for them and making sure their mistakes aren’t penalised all that much. That is something that was apparent with this particular race. I mean only 7 friggin cars finished the race, from a total of 22 cars. That’s pretty impressive to be honest and there was no RAIN. Like I said vintage race.I’m a bit sad to see Sebastian Vettel not get a chance to go all the way which would have been pretty cool and I’m really nervous with William’s choice for the second driver, Nakajima really doesn’t seem like he’s all there to be honest. he’s better than that idiot Piquet Jr, who’s completely all mouth and has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, but for my money Vettel would have been the ULTIMATE team mate for Rosberg at Williams and it would have been really good if they’d sorted that out but alas Toro Rosso know they’ve got a bit of a wunderkid on their hands so I doubt they’ll be giving him up any time soon.So fantastic start to the season, and after nearly 3 years Williams is back on the podium where they belong and hopefully this will mean many more of this sort of result.
Late last year I made the move to a mac and while there was a bit of getting used to certain things I’ve been really very happy with everything that it’s offered me in terms of getting on with computing in general. However the thing that I’ve missed the most is Firefox with all of it’s plugins and general speed and open source goodness. I tried Camino and i’ve got to say it’s good in some respects but trying to get any of the blasted plugins to work was a mission in and of itself. It just seemed to me like it wasn’t really there in terms of both backing and development as Firefox, which is just as well. So for the last couple of months I’ve been using Safari, and while I like a lot of stuff in Safari, I think there is room for improvement.Enter Firefox 3 Beta 4 which was released earlier this week. DAMN that’s MUCH better. I’ve installed GRApple Yummy theme, which is basically a correct integration of the theme into Leopard and I’m away. Firefox 3 is faster than Safari at loading up, it’s slowly starting to get all the various plugins updated as well and crucially it now also looks the part as well. I’ve not really played around with the browser much yet but one of the more welcome additions is the fact that now I can look for plugins and themes from within Firefox itself rather than going to the mozilla website and searching. It’s inspired me so much so that I installed ScribeFire straight away and I’m writing this from within there which I’ve never done before, just because I can.
Sky Crawlers - The new Mamoru Oshii film (you know the guy how did ‘Ghost in the Shell’ 1&2 and the excellent ‘Patlabour’ 1&2
So the guys over at Pixelmator have just released yet another update on their excellent little image editor. Now the thing that has impressed me more with this little editor isn’t soo much the actual editor, because the truth of the matter is I don’t think it has got what I need (which is surprisingly a small list) what’s impressed me most is their diligence in releasing new updates for the software each and every month on around the 20th or so. While some people on the forums expect them to be releasing things on a daily basis, I really like how they’ve decided to release once a month and see how much stuff they can cram into that month before releasing it to the world at large.
It just means that I’ve got something to look forward to from them and makes me happy to see that they are developing constantly to improve on the editor. What you can also notice from their updates log is the fact that as time has gone by, they’ve definitely been getting better at closing out issues as the lists have become larger and larger.
Does Pixelmator get my thumbs up as a Photoshop killer? Honestly not yet but as three minor requests that would make this editor my choice one, which I can’t imagine as being too difficult for the sole coder (I think it’s only one guy doing the coding right?) to deal with, however it might not be a major priority at the moment. Here’s the list:
<li><p>Text Function - Yeah this is pretty poor. Now while I might be ok with the limited font functionality how I would really like to have a full text box that I can resize as a minimum rather than being able to just put some text in a straight line. I know it's a really minor thing, but in my eyes it's what separates a good image editor from a great one. If you can add this into the next iteration that would be AWESOME.</p></li>
<li><p>Folders for Layers - Not sure how difficult this is but again this is one of those things that makes organising my layers something manageable as opposed to a complete and utter free for all.</p></li></ol>
I’m not going into any more detail as I’m sure the other things will come in time, however if I can get the above items by March I will love you guys forever.
Battlestar Galactica season 4 trailer is online. It seems it’s an old one, but i really like what they’ve done with the shadows coming in and out. The good news is that at least it’s coming in March, as originally I thought Sci-fi was going to try and put it out in April. Is there any news as to how far into everything the team is in the development of the series? ie will we be expect some more waiting in between episodes or are they going to show the whole thing in one chunk (yeah I know wishful thinking and all that).
This past month and a half have allowed me for some reason to watch more movies than I watched nearly all of last year. I just finished watching ‘Stardust’ which is based on a story written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Charles Vess. I believe I’ve got the book somewhere in Greece but I never got around to reading it and alas I’ve not had the chance to buy the book again. For some reason last year I missed this movie when it was in the cinema last year. I wanted to watch it but didn’t make enough of an effort to go and see it. As it turns out I was probably missing out on one of the few great movies from last year.
The best way to describe this story is a modern day fairy tale but with soo much charm that it leaves you with this stupid smile on your face after finish watching the movie. The story begins in Wall, called this because of a great big wall that separates it from the city of Stormhold. Tristan trying to win the love of his life, Victoria promises to bring her a fallen star they both saw fall (on the other side of the wall) before her birthday, which is one week. I’m honestly not going to try and ruin anything but the star isn’t exactly what he originally bargained for and the story that unfolds is one of the most pleasant, fun and ultimately romantic movies I’ve seen in a long time. Stranger still was the choice of the actual director of the movie, which was none other than Matthew Vaughn, of Layer Cake fame. Not exactly the kind of movies I’d expect from the man but he’s definitely creating a body of work that makes him one of my favourite directors in recent times. There’s a quality to this movie that harkens back to an era in the 80s where they used to make fun fantasy and sci-fi movies. Movies that had heart.
And before anyone mentions that I’m writing this review on Valentines day, seriously this has NOTHING to do with the retched day that is coming upon us (happy love day everyone, only the few Simpsons fans got that reference), it’s just an unlucky coincidence that I’ve just finished watching the movie. If you’re looking for a great movie that will leave a smile on your face after you’ve finished it, then this is one for you.
Now see that’s fucking weird. I was having a pretty rough Tuesday at work, so we went out for a couple of drinks after work. I work in Mornington Crescent, which is like at the bottom of Camden towards Tottenham Court Road, so most of our Friday evening are spent in and around the Camden area. It’s an area that’s got enough food choices to keep even the most fussy eater happy. It’s got it’s cinema, Regent’s Park is a stone’s throw away and there are 100s of pubs and bars around the area.
That’s not the weird part in case you were wondering, the weird part was the fact that on Wednesday we ended up in the Hawley Arms that night. This was actually the first time I had ever been in here, even though I’ve been working in and around the Camden area for nearly 6 years now. That’s what I’m trying to get at, the place has got soo many bars and stuff that it’s impossible to have been to all of them unless you make a real concerted effort. Now the pub (which is famous for bringing in the celebrities in the past…not so much any more I guess) was partly burnt in the fires last night. So I kind of just saw it in one piece just in time, even though I’d past by it 1000s of times in the past 5 years.
Hell, yesterday we were in Old Street and Stathi and I were thinking about dropping by Camden along the way, but decided against it since we were both pretty knackered, had we gone up we would have seen the fires. No doubt I’ll see that sometime tomorrow.
I’ve got a question which I was hoping somebody would help me with. I love Google Reader, I really do, loads of great things about this little application to like, in the same way that I like Gmail as well. My only problem with it right now is one function that is not present and I was wondering if others are having the same problem as well, and if there is any easy way to rectify this (like a greasemonkey script or something similar. Basically the way I read my feeds doesn’t allow me to read EVERYTHING in one go. Which is fine, no problem. Those items i’ve not read remain unread. The problem is that when i get back to reading things the newer feeds get placed at the top (which is fine and dandy) but all of the read items are mixed in with the unread ones. So what happens then is that I have to spend a long time scrolling down to the previous items.
Obviously sometimes (read: most times) i can’t be fucked and so i just ‘mark all as read’, which really defeats the object doesn’t it. Anyone have any ideas how to get around this, or is knows whether or not google might be looking to sort this out, or where I can send my email towards?
Firefox 2 is slow as donkeys on a Mac. It’s true. Even with my 2Gs of RAM I can still notice the strain, that and it’s constantly crashing for some reason (usually whenever I use Gmail. Alas I’m eagerly waiting for Firefox3 to be released which is looking a lot better for everyone. In the meantime here are a couple of plugins I’ve found for Safari that I think are really useful: (I’ve updated it with a slew more cool little plugins, based on the comments)
Anyone got any other ones I should look at?
The Chicago Spire by Santiago Calatrava. It’s not a secret that he’s my favourite contemporary architect at the moment. Good little promotional website. The thing is though listening to the interview, you’d get the impression that high rise residential buildings don’t get made…erm I’d like to disagree there, hundreds of buildings exist that are high rise are not for the corporations at all. This is unique maybe in that it does have a certain level of uniqueness in design, although some of these ideas have been used before in something like the Swiss Re building in London, by Foster & Partners.
You Sucjk at Photoshop. You do, you’re awful, and that’s why you’re here. Absolutely brilliantly funny series of photoshop ‘tutorials’ from Donnie. There are 4 tutorials at the moment. Hopefully he’ll continue these because they are pretty good.
So yesterday I finally saw a celebrity I actually gave two shits about seeing. I creator who’s work I’ve actually enjoyed greatly. We went for a few drinks in Belsize Park yesterday and then decided to go for a bit of food after that. Of course, four people trying to decide on food sometimes can go smoothly and sometimes can go horribly wrong. Well in this case as we were walking up the road towards Hampstead and we see this little French restaurant that’s part of a hotel. I instantly dismissed it as not something I’d really like to go for, however Sophia had been there and recommended the food as being pretty good. So we go have a look at the menu and it was wide enough to allow us to actually cater for everyone’s crazy mood of food that night.
I was last in line and Stathi was right in front of me, so he quickly turns around to me and says ‘Dude, is that Helena Bonham Carter? I quickly turn around and say “Nah, her hair’s all over the place, she’s not looking as glam as i would expect”. In that split second what I hadn’t noticed of course was the person she was with. As we got seated, I did a quick glance over and lo and behold there was Tim Burton. See for me THAT is a celebrity. The actors are not the important bit (more on this later). The director is the captain of the ship. He’s the one that touches the movie in absolutely every single way, story, script, casting, sets, money, promotion, the whole lot. A great director will take unknown actors and make a great movie. A great actor won’t be able to make a bad movie great. He’ll play his part in a great way and shine himself but the movie doesn’t really benefit…not really because it still remains a pile of shit, regardless of how great the actor’s performance actually was. So I generally will follow directors, rather than actors (there are VERY VERY few exceptions to this rule). This little snippet was the source of a relatively heated discussion yesterday as i tried to explain to everyone that I was properly star struck by a creator’s who’s work I’ve been following since Edward Scissorhands, and well I liked Helena in Fight Club, a lot. But i wouldn’t exactly consider myself a fan of her body of work, since except for that movie I’ve only ever seen/heard her in….Tim Burton movies (Corpse Bride and Sweeny Todd).
So there you go, the first ‘celebrity’ that I actually was kinda star-struck. See NEXT week I will be 100% COMPLETELY and utterly star-struck as I am going for the Alan Moore signing in London. For all those that don’t know who Alan Moore is, you guys really have not been paying my attention.
I know I really shouldn’t be excited about this, but the new Star Trek teaser (directed by JJ.Abrams) does look pretty awesome even for a teaser dammit
Fake Steve Jobs accepts one of those crunchie awards. Absoultely awesome video. The guy’s just as funny (probably more funny) in person than as a blogger to be honest, although I do read his stuff occasionally. And while he’s doing that thing he does so well, he also raises some really valid points as well.
This weekend I’ve decided to finally get down to completely my chartership forms. For those in the dark, part of a professional engineer’s life (and I’m not talking about your electrician or telephone repair man, who while both are great fields, they are definitely not engineers) is to try and achieve his chartership status. The status means a lot of things for different people and once you’re in the group you are really part of a group of people that have fulfilled specific criteria (ranging from their technical knowledge to their project management skills to their people skills and so on) and therefore you look at them in a completely and different manner.
I felt it most recently when I was sitting in a meeting this week with another consultant from another company and his business card had the letters CENG. That was in many respect enough for me to understand that the guy in front of me wasn’t pretending, he was the real deal and therefore I could discuss things with him on a specific level. Obviously he couldn’t really look at me with the same light as I’m missing those 4 little initials after my name. The thing is that after 6 years of work experience in the construction and building services industry, I’m no longer pretending either. I’m doing these things that are required of you as a Chartered Engineer. The only thing that is stopping from going forward is myself. So this weekend in the History of Khaled, I will be spending nearly EVERY waking hour to dealing with these forms once and for all. All that vigor that I put into my art, into my work on a regular basis, into my online contributions will now be put into my Chartership status. I will not go into work on Monday without that form completed as a draft and ready to go to my mentor as a first stab for him to pass comments.
However in order to do this, I’m probably going to need to sort out my supplies early in the morning for the weekend, and I’m going to have to turn off the internet. I’m only allowed specific toilet and food breaks. I’ve got the evening off, however the entire weekend is dedicated to this goal, fully and totally. Lets see if I actually get things done.
Today was the first time I used Awaken from Embraceware. It was a whole new experience for me waking up today to a bit of Soundgarden. Tradiitionally I’m jerked out of bet through the bitter sound of my cheap £4 alarm clock that’s been going strong for YEARS. I tell you what, I am most definitely not going to miss that horrible, horrible sound.
So went and saw I am Legend with Willy Smith on sunday, without really thinking about it too much. First movie of 2008 I go to, so it’s good that i did come out with a smile on my face. Sure it was no 28 Days Later (not seen the sequel so I can’t comment on that one) because that movie was a lot more closer to home for me, since it was based in my current home town of London and I am Legend is based in NYC.
My favourite parts in both movies are what the survivors of these plagues actually do in their free time and the scenes around the completely deserted cities. From that aspect this movie really does capture this element in a great way. In a surprising way, Smith actually does a good job in his role as the military scientist who’s lived through the plague that hit mankind. He does seriously come off as a very likable character and the co-star Sam is also a great positive to the feel of the movie.
Ok, spoiler alerts from now on, so move along if you’ve not seen the movie yet.
So what fell for me? The main area for me which didn’t really resonate that much was the fact that Will Smith was a military scientist who is actively trying to find a cure. He doesn’t come across as that sort of character. Scientists don’t look or act like him (well at least not the scientists i’ve met in my life). They put far too much Hollywood gloss over it by making sure I saw him work out without a shirt on. From that respect it was just pandering to the female population which I just kinda rolled my eyes at and asked for the movie to move along with the story. I’m glad he didn’t fight for another shower scene again (like he did in I robot,..hmm must be a bit of a theme going on there with the ‘I’).
I wasn’t all that impressed with some of the effects for the zombies or nightwalkers or whatever they decided to call them. Something about their design just fell extremely flat for me. However having said all that many of the concepts surrounding the story were pretty fun to see pan out. Like why the movie is called I am Legend was a good one and the fact that they were created after a cure to cancer.
There are several plot holes in the movie, however overall it was a fun movie to watch. Nothing you can’t watch on a dvd or something, since I don’t think it’s terribly necessary to have the full cinema experience past the first 20-30 minutes.
A lot of people have been asking me about what I think about the new WordPress admin that’s coming for version 2.4. No actually I am telling big fat porkie lies. No one has asked me what I think, but I’m not going to let that stop me. Lets talk the new WordPress admin shall we.
Swiped directly from the demo site that can be found at hyper123, this is what the glorious new WordPress admin in version 2.4 is starting to look like. I say starting to look like, because you can see that they’ve got a while to go in sorting out all the breakages everywhere. In fact by Matt’s own addmission, it’s only 10-20% complete, which is why they’ve decided to wait until March to release this version, because obviously they’re not there yet.
Now obviously i’ve got a slight bit of interest in what’s going on in the admin, simply because I (and others, whom I really shouldn’t speak for) gave a year’s worth of our free time (more or less) to the creation of a revamped admin panel for WordPress. The powers that be, (well Matt actually) didn’t like it, which is why it never got included into the core.
So nearly 2 YEARS after the efforts that we did on that particular project, we are now finally getting a new administration panel design. Others seem to have tried and failed as well (the likes of Brian and i believe some other Automattic employee, I’m not into the WP community since they went commercial). Is this the thing that Happy Cogs have produced? I’m not sure.
Obviously they’ve decided to go away from the colour scheme that was introduced due to the Shuttle project. What you think the blue that you see came from somewhere else? Yeah no. The other thing that has changed, so far, is the dashboard. Last thing that I can see is the comments now have a number at the top to tell you how many comments in moderation or whatever. Apart from that nothing to report really.
For my money however, this is really like putting a bandaid onto a broken leg. Seriously. It’s past the time for this. This would have been bloody relevant several years ago, not now. Now, well it’s completely outdated and anything less of a complete and utter redesign (and that includes rethinking how your menu structure actually works) if you want it to be something relevant, fresh, exciting and ultimately usable by the widest range of people….but in that case you might as well start from the beginning and building something truly new and exciting…oh wait we’re already doing that.
Loads and loads of things to write and talk about, especially as this blog is now officially 4 years old today. Got a great deal of exciting things to talk about in the coming month but I think I’ll share this excellent quote by one of my favourite authors Neil Gaiman:
Seems like the most apt way to begin this new year off. Happy new year everyone.
It’s been a while since i’ve done something like this, but I can’t help myself, i’ve been sitting on this for months now.
Freakangles by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield. Freakangel is a long form weekly comic (seems like 5 pages a week) that’s going to debut in February 2008. At some point I’m sure it’ll come out in print. This is pretty old news, but I only just noticed how good that bastard kid Paul Duffield. I know age shouldn’t matter much, but at 23 the little runt is far too good for his age. Go have a look at his stuff. The good news is that it seems that Paul will be doing some cover work for Ellis’s usually visually sub-par work published by Avatar (and also the reason I’ve only ever brought one Avatar book by Warren). It’s not that I think the art that’s published by Avatar is bad as such, it’s all technically adequate I guess, however it lacks a certain amount of finesse and class that Paul is bringing to the table, especially with his cover work for the new Ellis series, Anna Mercury.
Comics are just as much a visual medium as they are a written one; if the creators forget that, and see the art as something any monkey can contribute towards, they’ve missed the point COMPLETELY. It’s something I’ve noticed recently. When was the last time comic artwork truly inspired the reader? From my point of view, there are few artists that do that currently. Joshua Middleton is definitely one of them, as is James Jean, Tony Harris is always incredible to look at, Tomer Hanuka is another up and comer.
Oooohhhh right, now I get it.
So my mac mini arrived last week. Three seperate boxes, one for the mini, one for the wireless mighty mouse and another for the wireless keyboard. What made me laugh was the fact that Joyce, arguably the smallest person in the world was carrying them to give to me. This stuff is actually completely tiny, it’s really incredible. So much so, that I’m not actually sure what I’m going to be doing with the rest of the real estate of my desk, the bottom of my desk is also looking pretty barren, so I’m thinking there’s going to be a trip to Ikea to get a table to put my stereo, thus freeing up enough space to get myself an A1 drawing board, as I see that coming in handy a lot in the coming year.
It took a total of 12 minutes from the second I connected all the wires to the second i was surfing the net and talking to Bonsai online. The machine picked up the mouse, keyboard and wireless router in seconds and I was actually up and running in no time at all.
So what is my initial reactions to OSX now that I’ve played around on it for more than 30 minutes? There is genuinely a hell of a lot to like. Things that as a windows user I came to accept because that was the norm. That all changed last year when I got into Ubuntu and realised that there was actually a different way. The problem I faced with Ubuntu however was the lack of sophisticated software aimed directly at the operating system and the lack of hardware drivers for a lot of my peripherals. Obviously this isn’t the case here.
One of the greatest things for me however is the lack of having to shut down my computer every day. I put it to sleep and that’s pretty much it. Loading it up again takes a total of 3 seconds and I’m up and running again. The quiet nature of the machine is an incredible selling point to me, since my previous machine, although a work horse in it’s own right was fucking load as you like. So this was a breath of fresh air.
Then there’s how it all clicks together. All downloads go into the downloads folder which I can access. Hardly anything is actually on my desktop anymore (save for my blue shuffle icon, which I love btw). Installing a programme requires me to move the downloaded programme into the applications folder. I’ve got several funky ways to see my documents and applications in that is slightly less archaic than the traditional drop down menu and the list goes on.
Reading through that last paragraph you’d think that I had absolutely no negative comments about the system. Unfortunately you’d be wrong about that. However as that’s another post in and of itself I’ve had to split it up a bit.
Coraline teaser. Literally just finished reading Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, so this is perfect timing as far as I’m concerned, since it doesn’t influence the way I pictured Coraline in my head, which is decidedly different from this animated rendition of her. Still it’s good to see all these Gaiman movies coming out. First there was Mirrormask, then there was Stardust, then Beowulf and now Coraline. Kinda hoping we get Death soon because that would be pretty special.
2008 Pirelli calendar is up. Stunning use of colours. Also really great collection of the previous calendars. Anyone have any idea of how to get one of these?
New Batman trailer online. You know it’s going to be a good week when your monday morning starts with this AWESOME trailer. Summer 2008 can’t come soon enough.
You may (or may have not) noticed that things have been pretty quiet in the world of the ‘kode lately. I’ve kinda stepped a bit back from my online activities in the last couple of months as I decided to concentrate on other things in the lead up to Christmas, plus I’ve been out enjoying all the various Christmas parties and social events of the last couple of weeks as well.
The good thing about all of this is that it’s given me a great deal of time to reflect on things I want in my life; the year that’s past; what I hope the coming year will bring; what I’d like to change in the coming year and where I eventually want to be. I always write a massive end of year and this year will be no different, but I want to make sure this one goes out with a bit of a bang.
One of the areas of the design that I definitely didn’t expect was the fact that the design fits snugly into 800x600 screen resolution. That I think was just a happy accident rather than by decision, but based on my previous post about the EEEPC, I am glad that it worked out that way.
Michael Schumacher decides that it’s time for him to take the wheel of the taxi when he was late for a flight. Not sure how much I believe this article on Planet-F1 but it really made me chuckle.
Wakerupper is a new internet service that you can schedule when to have a wake up call sent to a landline or your mobile. Traditionally I don’t get a good night’s sleep when I’ve got a really important the next morning, partly because I worry about missing it. Not available in the UK yet, but hopefully it will catch on and they’ll extend the service worldwide.
So I got a load of help from the previous post about where I should look for more information about what kind of Mac I should go for. Unfortunately for me, I mentioned this to Graham at work, who’s a big computer hardware nerd…the man has got more computers in his house than spoons (and he’s been collecting for many years). So I mentioned my recent desire to make the jump. I said that I was probably going to hold out for the new Macbook Pro (if it comes out this January as rumored), with it’s ultra thin and slim stylings and trimmings (he already knows how much of a nut I am about computer portability, when I need it portable that is). Soo what does he do? He sends me the link for the Eee PC from Asus. Why did you go and do that for Graham?
For those in the dark (and believe me in a couple of months you won’t be in the dark at all about this), the Eee PC is one of the smallest fully functional laptops on the market for £220 (that’s about $400 dollars or so). 22.5cm across by 3.5cm thick and coming in at a measly 920grams!!!!! Preloaded with Xandros (a Debian based Linux distribution), it’s an ideal toy for the guy and gal on the move. I’ve put that image there because it definitely gives you a feel for the actual size of this thing. We’re talking slightly larger that a typical moleskin, which is just absolutely STONKINGLY small. How fast is it you ask? Well it starts up in about 20 something seconds, which is pretty damn impressive when you’re on the move.
No, I’ve not gone back on my thought about getting a mac, but I have had to rethink what equipment I want and need. The thought process is simple, get what you actually need. I’ve been working on my machine now for about 3 years roughly. It’s got a 64bit AMD processor coming in at 1.8GHz (or something like that). It’s got 512mgs of RAM and a 160Gb hardrive. I don’t ever do any video editing or any rendering (even though I bought this machine 3 years ago under the pretence that I would start getting into 3D modelling). So what do I use my computer for? I edit photos in photoshop, surf the net, code and programme some stuff, use vector illustration programmes (that do sometimes need some juice) and watch downloaded TV series, listen to music and well that’s about it. So is it really necessary to get the beast that is the MacPro? Do I really need the absolute latest processing power? Barring the occasional photoshop work, nothing I throw at my computer will really flex it’s muscles.
So I decided to get equipment that would eat anything I personally threw at it. So I’ve got myself a mac mini (since I already own a 20inch screen, I originally though it was 19inch, bonus!). I increased the RAM to 2Gigs and opted for the version with a DVD writer (since I do still do need this even though I’ve got two external hardrives). It’s arriving in a couple of weeks, and I’ve already started making a list of applications I might need. Expect a lot more silly questions being posted as I try to get to grips with the system. You guys having been doing this for a lot longer so I’m most definitely going to be leaning on you guys for advise and help.
There is definitely a market for the ultra portable computer, however it’s also important that the manufacturers realise that they should be catering to what the consumer needs as opposed to creating products that can do 1000 time more things than the user will ever likely need. Asus seems to have realised this ahead of anyone else, but it’s going to be very interesting to see how the other manufacturers react to this. Is this move going to change how we see computers? Is this going to be the tipping point for Linux? Or is it just a bit of a fad? Am I getting over excited over nothing really? Or is this going to be the ipod of ultra portable computers? I haven’t been able to see an Eee Pc up close since it sold out in like 2 days from release in the UK, but I’m sure sometime next year I’ll have a look at it and make my mind about whether or not it’s actually worthy of the hype.
New Si Scott creme-your-pants-work. It’s been a while since I was thoroughly impressed by a new artist (in the same way I am with say James Jean). Si has been getting extremely good and his latest collection of work called Resonate is an awesome collection of work.
World Press Photo 2007 Winners. Unbelievable collection of photographs collected from the past year. I guess it’s that time of the year when all these lists start coming through.
I think I might be ready to make the plunge. I’ve been fighting this urge for a little while now but I think I would like to invest in a Mac. So the main question is what do I do? Which model to I buy? When do Apple generally release their new stuff? I know it’s usually around Christmas time and I think sometime in April? Should I wait till January just in case they release an upgrade to their latest products? The thing is I’ve currently got my PC with my 19 inch monitor, so I’ve got to find something to do with them as having both might seem a bit superflous.. or I could get a laptop so that I can have everything in a compact package that’s portable when I need it to be but can also be hooked into a larger monitor if I want it to be. Surely it’s pretty easy to get a screen switcher right?
Is it worth getting a Macbook Pro, or should I opt for the less expensive option? What are the good websites out there that show all these options laid out (there has to be right?) Which are the good sites for this sort of thing? Daring Fireball is commentary about stuff going on in the land of the mac but not really a dissection of the options and pitfalls for a newbie into the world.
It’s been nearly 4 years since the last Radiohead album ‘Hail for the Thief’. While I enjoyed that album as I’ve generally enjoyed most of what they’ve produced, The Bends and Ok Computer being the zenith of their output as far as I’m concerned, their new album ‘In Rainbows’ is a completely different beast altogether.
The major difference here is the way in which they’ve decided to distribute their album. See they’ve decided not to go the traditional route and release the album via a label. Instead what they’ve decided to do is let you download it off their website. Nothing new there, right? Ah but here’s the catch. YOU decide how much you actually want to pay for it. You can either pay something, or download it for free.
This turns everything on it’s head as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always claimed that the price of music is completely and utterly extortionate. A tiny teeny fraction of the cost of what you pay actually goes to the creators themselves, instead the majority goes to everyone else around. £12 for an album is just too much. So download it you say and just keep the music? You obviously don’t know me very well. When it comes to music from my favourite bands I will buy the CD. It’s just the way it goes. For me it’s not just the music, it’s the package. It’s the entire experience. I’m also a collector of sorts. I like to have physical copies of material by certain bands. I own a proper CD player and Amp that I paid through my nose to get a better sound. If you think that you can’t tell the difference, then you’ve obviously not heard a proper system in action.
Sure, this might be something of a dinosaur mentality however it’s one of those thought processes that I honestly cannot get away from. The thing is Radiohead are known for the amount of effort and creativity that they put into their package as well. They obviously feel the same way about this sort of thing, otherwise we wouldn’t have the school library book for Amnesiac or the Map for Hail to the Thief. Case in point, in addition to the actual download option, there’s also the option to pre-order the physical edition of this album, which comes with 2 CDs with artwork, photographs, lyrics and 2 Vinyls of the material as well. All encased in a hardcover book and slipcase.
I’ve only just found out about all this, since I only found out yesterday that they’ve got a new album out. So I quickly downloaded the album (more on that in a little while). Is it any good? The short answer is that ‘In Rainbows’ is BRILLIANT. It’s one of the best things I’ve heard this year, and this is a year where the Smashing Pumpkins released their return to form album. It’s a mixture of ‘The Bends’, ‘Ok Computer’ and maybe even a little bit of ‘Pablo Honey’. It’s not this heavy rock album. It’s a glass of fine wine, where the drums and guitars are back. Yorke’s voice is crisp and clear over the music in this perfect mixture that only they can achieve. God it’s great to hear well produced music again.
So back to the download versus physical object question, what am I going to do? Well I’ve already downloaded the album for free, and have ordered the physical edition of the album as well.
A brief message. Obviously I missed the launch of this little gem. It’s a website of 200 word essays and thoughts on design that are accompanied by illustrations that change the look of every post. Awesome execution. While it borrows heavily from Khoi’s own Subtraction (in the comments section), it is great and inspiring to see what they’ll come up with next.
VectorMagic is a free online application that turns your bitmaps into vectors. It’s the work of two students at Stanford and I’ve got to say that it really does work a charm. I’ll keep an eye on this just to see if there’s any legs in online photo editing tools.
Golden Compass trailer in glorious quicktime. This movie cannot come soon enough…seriously. I’ve been waiting for this movie version for years now, since I read the first book (er hem, Northern Lights), 6 years ago now. Everything looks like it’s going to kick some major ass. If you’ve not read the book yet, shame on you.
So I had myself a bit of a Facebook purge today. As Facebook is becoming more and more part of the cultural landscape it’s become a bit more important to be a wee bit more careful regarding which people can actually see your details. Maybe I’m being a bit too cautious but the thing is I have been slapped once before regarding the ‘Kode at work. I know sounds strange since I’m extremely careful to make sure I don’t really say anything about what’s going on at work except regarding which projects I might be working on and having a picture taken off the architect’s website. The point is, you never know when certain information is going to come back and really bite you on the ass, and as such I’d really rather not get into too many of those situations in the future (hey I am a blogger and therefore I will no doubt get into trouble at some point down the line).
So I’m off any groups, won’t find me as part of any networks. The only people that can see me are the few that I allow in. Any photos I don’t like I take the tags off and hope they never get seen (exceptionally bad ones are asked to be removed).
The thing is I find Facebook as a concept to be awesome, and I love the implementation of it as well. I like it’s clean lines and distinct design. I like how functional it can be (although finding a decent Flickr plugin is like pulling teeth) I just want all my Flickr photos to be part of my photo albums and that’s it. However as with everything moderation is the best option.
Obviously this doesn’t come as much of a surprise to many who have been expecting this call for a while now, particularly after the whole Stepneygate scandal that rippled through Formula 1 this season. To be honest, this was a vintage year in formula one. It had just about everything, on the track and off the track. So it all draws to a close with Alonso being dropped by Mclaren. Obviously this throws a slew of new questions onto the table. Who is going to replace Alonso at Mclaren? Where will Alonso end up?
The man’s options are pretty limited.
So he’s got really two higher probability options in Renault and Williams because they have seats available. He’s also got two other smaller options in Honda and RedBull although they would need to get rid of one of their two drivers.
To keep things on a relatively positive note, here’s that ad that the guys did sometime this year. While the acting is dreadful the idea is a good one. Too bad it really didn’t last more than a year. It was kinda fun seeing the squabbling on the track and reading the made up remarks online. Added another dimension to the sport.
It’s time we all took the word ‘average’ back. I’ve been thinking about this (and actually mouthing off about it as well to anyone dumb enough that will listen to me) but basically one of the things that I have found lacking in the use of the English language is the proper use of words to describe things. When you ask someone about how they felt a movie or an event was, unless it was terrible the general response you’ll probably get is ‘Yeah it was pretty good.’ Or ‘Yeah it was good’. Don’t lie to me dammit. It wasn’t good because if it was you’d be talking about it with a little bit more conviction, a little bit more enthusiasm. Good implies that it had merit to speak of. Clearly you have none to express. No dear sir (or madam), what in actual fact you’re trying to say is that it is merely average. Average is a good word to use when it fits the bill. When something doesn’t shine but moves forward in an adequate fashion it can only considered average.
So for example ‘Cars’ can only be considered as an average movie when you put it in direct comparison to John Lasseter’s previous outings. It had good moments in it for sure, but as a movie it cannot be considered anything but ‘average’ in comparison. Of course there’s the issue of being kind to people. As another example, most definitely do not say: ‘Thanks Grandma, that dinner was most definitely average.’
So like Randall in Clerks II, I’m taking back the word average. I strongly urge you to do the same. Hell you know you want to.
Wanted trailer is out and about. For those in the dark, Wanted is an excellent little mini-series that was written by Mark Millar and drawn by J.G Jones, published by Top Cow several years ago. It was completely over the top and Mark Millar at the time made no secrets about whom he would have wanted to play the lead roles. So much so that the character designs were based on the actors they (along with Jones) would have wanted. So Halle Berry, Eminem. They got Angenlina Jolie and Morgan Freeman instead and the plot sounds pretty much nothing like the actual graphic novel…except in the looses possible way. Lets put it this way, it’s not going to be another 300, that’s for sure.
Latest iteration of the Gimp. Finally, in an update that seems to have been in development for years and years, the latest Gimp is released. Also nice little website they’ve got going there. Dark and orange must be in vogue with open source project websites.
Ok seriously that was as fun as getting my head kicked in by a bunch of chunky school girls while being stuck on a roller coaster feeling a bit nauseous from the doggy fish salad I had last night…. ok you probably get the point. Just recovering from my beast of a man-flu. Monday afternoon I could feel a small ache in my body that only got worse through out the night and then come Tuesday morning that was it, KO on Khaled. I was out. Couldn’t bloody move. Fever. The works. The fact that I’m writing this right now shows that I am actually well on the way to recovery and can actually think straight and get on a do things. So the moral of the story kids? There’s a nasty bug going on that will render even the toughest of men.
It really is not difficult to fall in love with Japan. The country makes it completely easy for you in soo many ways. The organisation is beyond compare, the clean streets and the extremely polite people that provide any service to you. The nature when you get to it is completely breathtaking and the concrete jungles that continue around the coast need to be seen to be believed. The food that has a varied quality to it where you can eat, feel full and yet not so full that you are about to collapse from pain. The trains that run like clockwork to the book stores on every corner. The cheap comic books and the plethora of magazines and newspapers.
The next few posts when I get back will be filled with things about Japan. I will be updating with photos, sketches, maps and commentary about the areas I visited in my extremely brief visit to the land of the rising sun. Until then I got myself another day in Tokyo and a 15 hour flight back to the UK.
Well, I have not been near a computer for about a week but it’s good to see that the internet doesn’t stay quiet. I am specifically referring to the exodus of members from the 9rules network. Now to all those out there scratching their heads and wondering why I am calling this an exodus, you’ll understand soon enough. A little history for those in the dark or who don’t actually care all that much about such things, 9rules is a blogging network that reached it’s zenith (at least in terms of popularity) about a year and a half ago…give or take a several months. It was an incredibly vibrant place, with a great website and really active members. This was back when bloggers were rock stars….erm you know what I am saying, back when blogging was fresh and new as opposed to the norm in the web landscape.
I have not had the time to formulate my reasons (in a proper post that is) for leaving the network and all my miscellaneous thoughts about the process and aftermath (as I am in Japan at the moment and can’t sleep), however what I would like to do is try and compile a list of all the 9rules members that did leave.
My reason for doing this is to address one of my main gripes about the way in which departures from the network have been handled, or as the case may be, not been handled. While a new site is celebrated, a departing site (or even original member departing) does not even warrent a small mention on the offical blog. While I can understand how the powers that be might feel like a failure that people would choose to leave, I personnally see this in another way.?This should really be a time to wish everyone well in all their future endevours and thank them for being a part of the network (as long as those members were not kicked out for shoddy conduct, which I don’t think any of the listed members were). In this particular case a least 16 sites have left the network, one of which was there from round one, I have been there from round two and several others have been extremely active members in the community (I doubt anyone will reach Paul’s forum count, ever).
So with that in mind I would like to start a little list of the 9rulers that have recently left the network, it was an honour being seen in such great company as yourselves (if you have left recently and I haven’t included you, please drop a comment and I will update this post):
So I’m sitting here in Naoto’s house and writing this after experiencing my first week (more or less) in Japan. Seriously i cannot imagine myself staying away from this country. So many things to absorb in such a little time that i could honestly keep writing for a long time. Of course if i did that then i would be at the bloody computer all day and not actually out there exploring things and soaking in everything. Therefore i will try to actually write down as much stuff as possibly can that has made an impression on me and then hopefully elaborate on everything (and include as many pictures as i can) when i get back. These posts i guess will act as placeholders until i get back.
New Sony Bravia advert. Unlike the last couple of times this one has got bunnies and plastesine. I’ve got to say, it only gets really good and actually worthy of the legacy of the previous two adverts towards the end, so be sure to watch it all the way through.
You know what I find the absolute weirdest thing in the world? I’ve got this Canon LiDe scanner right, got it something like 5 years ago and has served me pretty well in all those years. It’s not the best scanner in the world, but to be honest, based on the fact that most of my stuff is put on the web rather than in print, it’s not exactly the end of the world. The weird thing is that my scanner works right out of the box in Ubuntu. Don’t need to download any drivers, don’t need to mess around with anything, and it works quickly and perfectly. Obviously it’s not all roses right, my Ipod shuffle obviously doesn’t want to play nice with Ubuntu, even though the latest version of Banshee is the music player that I’ve been waiting for all my life. So many great little features have been added to the latest couple of versions since I played last with it. Yeah like that’s any good to me as my fekkin sound card that doesn’t work for toffee and keeps giving me trouble all the time.
So I get back on Windows (because it’s got Photoshop) and fekkin Apache has decided to stop bloody working through XAMPP, so I can’t honestly get any work done for Habari as doing it on a live server takes forever.
I did download the latest and greatest Oxygen icons onto Ubuntu and I’ve got to say they are definitely some of the nicest things I’ve seen in a good long while…shame I couldn’t get the latest version of the Crystal icons to fekkin install (lovely redesign by Everaldo btw), as those look great as well.
Obviously I’ve upset someone in computerland and they’re trying to punish me in every painfully frustrating way. Seriously it’s times like this that I think the magic bullet is getting myself a Mac. But then again everyone says that when all manner of software decides not to work right?
Iron Man trailer is up. I’ve officially come in my pants after seeing this trailer. It’s as badass as the first time you saw the Christopher Nolan Batman. I mean seriously everything about that movie looks completely brilliant. I’m a massive man in armour fan, my absolute favourite comic book character is a little known character called X-O Manowar from the Valiant comic days. The creators of that character cut their teeth and wrote/drew some of the most memorable Iron Man stories. Seeing as I’ll never get to see an X-O Manowar movie, this will have to do. Seriously I can live with that.
First day of school! Well it’s not really, but today is the first day that the new graduate intake begins at Arup (probably in many other places as well, or maybe that was last week); in any case I can’t help but get that first day of school feeling, alas the difference of course is that once I was the student, now I am the maaaster….of course master of what I still have no idea. There’s a certain freshness in the air about the whole day. Maybe it’s feels that way because it coincides with the autumn finally coming into it’s own (although once again English weather being what it is, we had the absolute best day of the summer on Saturday so there you go really).
Hope everyone has a good day at school today.
The above image was taken from OC-76’s flickr account, go check it out for more gigs photos.
I wrote this last week but because of various trips I didn’t get a chance to post this properly. So on Monday (3rd of September) Thomas had tickets to go watch Chris Cornell at the Roundhouse in Camden. I’d completely forgotten about this seeing as I’ve had arguably one of the busiest times of my life this past month. So Monday comes around and we go off to see Chris Cornell. Now the issue is that I’m a pretty massive Cornell fan. While I adore the pumpkins, Cornell definitely has the best voice of all the 90s grungers, by a long way. Put him up next to Kurt Cobain, Billy Corgan, Eddie Vedder, Scott Weiland and he trounces each and every single one of them. Until this Monday, I thought that was it really. The thing is though the man has been pretty productive over the last few years, being in Soundgarden, then followed by a solo album, then Audioslave came and then another solo album.
My brother’s a massive fan as well, but like him I felt that the latest album was a bit lacking, which unfortunately it is. However no matter what Chris can still lay claim to being in my top 10 classic alternative albums of all time. With his performance on Monday he also showed that he was without a doubt a superb performer that enjoys himself immensely. Everyone who was there just couldn’t get over the fact about how crisp and clear and POWERFUL his voice actually remains throughout the live act. The man and his band played their little hearts out for 2 and a half hours. The band took a break while Chris continued with an acoustic set and then he only took a 5 minute break and was back for another 30 minutes. To say that they rocked the house is a complete and utter understatement. It wasn’t Chris Cornell, it was Audioslave, soundgarden and Chris Cornell all wrapped into one evening.
This review at Subba cultcha captures a lot of what I felt. Honestly I don’t know where to start explaining which of the actual songs was the best one, because they were all sung with passion. Hard to say this, but easily one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. Anyone know where to get a copy of this gig?
So this last week I was in Princeton for my ‘little’ project in Egypt. The highlight of the trip without a doubt however was actually meeting Michael Graves. He was very busy looking at all sort of stones and mural paintings and whatnot for this other project that their office is knee deep into, however he spared some time and we had a bit of chat with him (myself, Steven and Reid) and he signed a monograph for each of us. Incredibly nice guy, very softly spoken and has got this great little smile that shows that he’s seriously enjoying himself.
Going through the monograph and buying stuff from their little design store you get a great feeling of all the different things that they’ve had a chance to influence and design. Notably are of course of all the Alessi products.
My price piece however is an Acme Studios pen (designed by MG) which is not only weighty but is a great little writing tool. The closes thing I can give an approximation to is how the front plates of Zippo lighters are used as a design piece, or statement
So I finally got around to doing some work on Habari this weekend, which was awesome. First time I actually used SVN and the guys and gals on the channel gave me a right grilling. Obviously I fucked things up the first time around but alas that’s ok, it’s all part of the experience. Below is the screenshot of what the current dashboard is currently looking like. It’s currently employing Blueprint version 0.5 which honestly has made my life soo easy in that I can actually concentrate on designing rather than setting up grids etc. Still LOADS of work to be done, but steadily this little project is coming along pretty nicely.
One thing that has me kind of stumped however is why the hell the tables appear differently? For some reason the height attribute for td element doesn’t work in Firefox. Anyone got any ideas what can be done about this?
One year older, one year wiser. Damn that one went by pretty quickly. I’ve got to say that when I was younger I used to get really pretty depressed about my birthday, nowadays I’ve come to accept the inevitable, so now the plan is to grow old with dignity….so I’ll be working on that last part later on. In any case happy birthday to all the Leo/Virgo cusp people born on the 23rd of August have a great one.
I consider myself a relatively well travelled kind of guy. The thing is though with the exception of America last year and this year my travels have been limited to Europe and the Middle East. The furthest east I’ve ever travelled is probably Syria, if I’m not mistaken. On Friday we booked our tickets to visit Naoto (or Hatori-san) in Japan for the first two weeks of October. To say I’m excited is a small and completely inaccurate understatement. I’ve been interested in Japanese culture since I was about 8 when I first Robotech as a kid on Saturday mornings. This was then further augmented with being a complete electronics GEEK. What you thought I became an Electrical Engineer by chance. Oh no no no, it was more than that. At some point in my life I’ll be sure to write a bit further about it.
Then you start adding the sheer amount of Manga and Anime I consume on a regular basis and you might start seeing the trappings of a bit of a fetish. Naoto has already assured me that we’re definitely going to be visiting the Studio Ghibli museum while we’re there (I think he loves it more than me).
Kung Fu Rodeo has got two sets (first one, second one) of Batman photos. All I’ve got to say is that Christian Bale makes such a brilliant Bruce Wayne, and Ledger in the thin purple suit looks absolutely perfect. This movie can’t come out soon enough as far as I’m concerned.
While I’m not a Mclaren fan (Mercedes doesn’t do it for me) and there’s something a little bit arrogant about Alonso, I found myself rooting for the rookie Lewis Hamilton. It’s always nice when the underdog goes up against the odds and does something special. Remember Greece in Portugal for the Euro 2004? Well, all was going well until this weekend. There was all sorts of rumors and stories being thrown around. The thing is even after all the controversy this weekend, I wasn’t much phased. Hamilton disregarded team orders, Alonso slapped him down for it. Ok a bit childish, whatever. The thing that rubbed me the wrong way however was Lewis’s reaction over the radio to Ron Dennis. I honestly don’t know how much you can believe what the Sunday Mirror says (usually fuck all to be honest) but they claim that this was the radio conversation between Ron and Lewis:
Hamilton:
Dennis:
Hamilton:
Not exactly words from the nice guy persona that he’s come to display on TV etc. The only backup that this was indeed said however was what Alonso had to say about it all:
Well, while most people will say that shit like this is bad for F1, I say bring it on. It’s fun for the viewers to watch shit like this happen. It gets people talking, maybe about the wrong thing but hopefully that will lead to other aspects of the sport. I do think that Lewis has grown far too big for his own shoes. I mean seriously kid, you’ve come into the sport and been handed the best car out there, that was developed by the world champion two years running, who beat a Ferrari with Schui in it for both years. You don’t burn bridges that quickly, before the first season is done. Newsflash, you might not win the fucking championship yet.
Blade Runner Suitcase. We’ve been hearing about this suitcase for a while, but it’s not until today that I actually saw what they’re talking about. It’s a real fucking metal suitcase!!! Ok so I might actually go out of my way and buy it now. I was having a conversation with Steven the other day and he was asking to get the theatrical version which he actually prefers to the Director’s cut. Definitely will be interesting to see what he was talking about, because I’ve got to be honest, I can’t remember this movie in the amount of detail he seems to have remembered it. Nice suitcase though.
So I’ve started looking at my blog feed reader and it hit me that I don’t really read all of my feeds as much as I skim them to see what new stuff might be happening in the world. The issue is though that I’m finding it harder and harder to find something that I must stop and read. I find that seriously strange. It’s not like I’ve got that much more blogs that I’m reading. I tend to add new blogs to my feed every so selectively.
Sure you have Khoi’s little commentary left and right, you have Paul’s exhaustive hardware reviews of consumer electronics I will never buy nor really care about. Michael’s blog is always an interesting collection of links (mainly movie related ones) from all over the place, Chris’s blog usually throws up some cool videos or interesting youtube snippets that I would never have the energy to look for, Journalista always gives me just about everything I could want in terms of comic book bytes and other assorted goodies (oftentimes more than I can possibly grasp). However one trend I’ve noticed is that the raw bloggers out there have reduced in number.
Oh but Khaled aren’t you part of the 9rules network? I’ve said this before (on another site) but I’ll say it again, 9rules is no longer the place it used to be. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just decidedly different. When I joined a couple of years ago it had something like 50 blogs in total. That’s 50 people I more or less knew from the forums. Knew and appreciated and liked and worked with and helped out etc. There are hunderds of memebers on there now, and honestly I don’t have the time to go through each one and vet each one.. I guess it was just more manageable in the past, for me at least, as I would add the ENTIRE feed for 9rules. Hell I wouldn’t know where to get it now if I tried. Anyone know where the feed for all the blogs from 9rules can be found? Shouldn’t that be a pretty prominent thing on this site? Shouldn’t you be able to taylor make your own RSS feed of all the various sites that are available to you? Kinda makes sense to me. Don’t know how easy it is to implement but I’m sure the guys are more than capable of doing something like that.
A couple of years ago it was this massive buzzing time, where we as bloggers (all of us, including you) ruled the net. Movies lived and died by our buzz (Snakes on a Plane), TV series got second leases on life (Serenity), well partly because of us.
Somedays I honestly feel like we’re not all that important anymore. Is it because all new fads become old quickly? Have we passed the ‘golden era’ of blogging? Is it that there is far too much noise on the net, and it’s becoming harder and harder to actually seperate the wheat from the chaff? Is blogging relevant nowadays or is it simply part of the general zeitgeist that is accepted and taken for granted?
The Phiculator is a great little application, that you can download as a flash file as well (don’t know but I love applications that come as flash files). It calculates ? (phi), the golden ratio. To put things into a design perspective, if you’re trying to make a website that is 850px wide, it gives you the size of the column that splits this 850px line in an aesthetically pleasing way. So your main column would be 525px in that case. Also I really love James Mellers’s site as well.
Batman Animatrix style?
I’ve got to say that I am COMPLETELY there, as the Animatrix was the only decent ‘sequel’ that the Matrix movies spawned. I’ve watched the first movie several times; same with the animated short stories that followed, but I have yet to see the sequels again since I saw them originally in the cinema. I was talking to Ryan about this and they’ve got to be some of the most anticipated movie sequels ever (after maybe Star Wars) and the single biggest disappointments ever (I’d say more than Star Wars because I actually liked the Phantom Menace).
There is NOTHING I like more during the summer than a cold Greek salad. It’s no wonder I’ll buy all the ingredients on the Monday and make myself one every day at work. However I find it mind boggling that I can’t seem to be able to buy a decent Greek salad in any restaurant that I’ve been to, Greek or otherwise. To spread the love I’m going to give everyone explicit details on how to make the simplest and healthiest dish this side of the Mediterranean.
The ingredients are very simple, for a decent sizes salad (1-2 people) you’ll need the following:
Ok so now that we’ve got our ingredients, it’s time to understand the other aspect of what makes it a good Greek salad. It’s all about how you cut the ingredients. I know it sounds slightly strange but it’s true.
Summer on a plate.
Olav’s just released his Blueprint CSS framework. What I like about it is the overall idea and clever little things like how to implement the grid structure.
The second official release of Habari, version 0.2 is out the door. Everyone has been working real hard, always with love, always with passion. One of the things that this release includes is the user manual which is included with the release. Yes, when you download the software, you’re downloading the manual as well. For the manual we’ve chosen to use the awesome Tiddlywiki for this purpose. Don’t be afraid get involved. Spread the Word!
So you might have noticed a certain lull in activity on the Kode. The main reason is the fact that I’m EXTREMELY busy at work right now. It’s been absolutely insane. The thing is though, it’s pretty standard fare for the summer as most people with kids tend to take their holidays in and around the same time which makes the rest of us crazy ones that are left behind to hold the fort in the meanwhile. The good news is that I’m actually enjoying a lot of the work that I’ve been involved with (not that I haven’t enjoyed my previous work). One of my latest projects is this tiny little project in Egypt. The architects on the project are Michael Graves. We went to see them in Princeton last week and that was actually pretty cool. My first visit back to the states since last year when I went to my brother’s graduation.
I honestly doubt that I’ll be blogging much during August, as I’ve got very little to say and generally soo tired, I can’t even talk. The thing is though that I really miss my website. I miss the interaction with all the crazy cats and dogs on the net. I miss being involved. Hopefully come September I can have more time to remedy this situation.
Moore on season 4 of Battlestar Galactica. Sorry I couldn’t help myself. This was a panel that was discussed at San Diego, although none of the major comic book websites mentioned anything about it. There are some interesting little nuggets, like the fifth Cylon to be revealed towards the end of the series and the fact that D’Anna (Lucy Lawless’s character) is coming back as well for a few episodes. Also they mention Lampkin coming back which would be brilliant as he was the standup character to get noticed in the Season 3 finale.
The first Dark Knight teaser is up and ready to be watched. I’ve just been watching Nolan’s Memento and I’ve got to say the guy has yet to disappoint me which is such a rare quality in any creative person.
Tales from Earthsea by Goro Miyazaki (the son of Hayao). File this under “I hadn’t heard anything about this until yesterday” sections. This movie seems to have all the right ingredients. It’s an adaptation of the great Earthsea story (which I’m a huge fan of). It’s being done by Studio Ghibli, who are to me like Pixar, they can do no wrong. Finally it’s directed by a Miyazaki, so it’s bound to be great right? I was like, oh cool, it’s his son doing a movie. That’s bound to be interesting.
Then I started thinking, hang on, I’ve never heard he had a son that was into animation. Seems like there has been a series of in house fighting over the fact that Goro was given this movie to direct. Surprisingly the main instigator to all of this was his own father. Reading around further (article from the latest Little White Lies) shows that the father/son relationship has completely broken down and is practically non-existent really. Honestly, this has kinda taken away from the movie from me. It’s not a particularly happy story but alas a new Ghibli movie is always cause for celebration.
The movie is out in cinemas in the UK as of the 3rd of August. Loads of good links over at the wikipedia page. You can read Goro’s translated production blog over at Nausicaa.net
Ars Technica has a great little article about Hack Week. Novell recently has a week where they freed their developers to stop work on their daily routine and work exclusively on an open source project of their choosing. Great little idea which seems to have spawned a lot of great contributions back to the open source community as a whole. Slowly but surely I guess we’ll get there, eventually.
I rarely pimp the company (in fact I never mention the company except in my contact page) but you can find 72 pages from the much larger Arup Design Yearbook 2007. There’s also a sampler of last years book which has got some pretty cool things to look at as well.
Update: Seems the website is down,…now that is might strange indeed. In any case you can also get a link to the pdf from here (that’s still working).
Last night in Athens, and I’ve started thinking about what I’m leaving behind and what I’ve got to look forward to. I know everything seems soo much more soft and squishy when you’re on holiday and god only knows how much I needed this break. Actually scrap that, all my friends know full well as I’ve been pretty on edge these last few months as it’s been a pretty tough time for me at work.
Originally I was meant to be back on Monday evening, I extended the flight for another 5 days and I’m really glad I did. This trip has been an eye opener in many respects, as I’ve had the chance too look around me and take in the quality of life that people over here take for granted.
In short the quality of life just seems more in tune with what I’ve been brought up to expect. So what is actually missing here? Loads. The issue is that my balance for what I want and expect in life however is still found elsewhere. I guess there will come a time when that balance will fall in the other direction but I guess it’s good to remember the good things. I needed to be reminded of the good things and if anything this trip definitely showed this to me.
Just got back from watching the Transformers with Yanni. To be honest, I really don’t think I could have watched this movie and enjoyed it as much as I did with anyone but Yanni. See we both grew up watching and playing with the Transformers. We’ve had countless arguments about them , with them and because of them.
So what did I think of the movie? First off, this isn’t a movie for everyone. Not everyone is going to appreciate the whole idea of transforming robots. If you’re a guy in your mid to late 20s this movie was made for you and me. Classic lines like:
Echo straight out of the cartoons we would watch on a Saturday morning. The story was adequate in that it chugged along and there was something there in-between the awe-inspiring action scenes. I don’t usually get like this, but this movie was all about the robots, transforming and kicking the shit out of each other.
Forget the bullshit attempts at humour, I swear that asshole who tried to write the American Pie riff needs to be taken outside and given a good kicking. It had absolutely no place in this movie. I’m sure it was some toss-jockey producer saying that they need more humour in the movie. Some of the humour was done well, like with Bubblebee and his great music choices at the beginning of the movie.
Can someone explain the relevance of the Australian chick and the fat man? Comic relief and what exactly? Easily the most REDUNDANT characters I’ve ever seen in any movie. Also I’ve got to say that John Turturro’s role was a tad bit annoying. I love John (Big Lebowski being his crowning achievement as far as I’m concerned) but what the hell was this role all about?
Anywho, enough about the peripheral characters, let’s concentrate on the stars of this movie, namely the Autobots. It’s great how they explained the whole morphing into cars and whatnot, that was very nicely done. What I didn’t really care for was the whole product placement within the actual fekking movie. Was it really necessary to have the whole Ebay thing? Or every car being a GMC? Or what about Nokia being Japanese as well? Or the Pepto Bismol? I mean seriously great chunks of this movie was nothing more than one big advert.
However all of that disappeared, the second you saw Bubblebee transform into the newly supped up version of himself. Or Optimus Prime transforming for the first time. Starscream and Megatron transforming in mid air, combined with the sound effects and the music is enough to make you forget about all the short comings of the movie, because basically they COMPLETELY kicked it out of the whole theatre. I’ve never seen anything like that. It was meant to be larger than life and the effects delivered every step of the way.
Bring on the sequel.
Christian presents a great little list of things you didn’t know (or may not have known) about the Firefox web development toolbar. Anyone have something similiar for the Firebug plugin?
Amazing advert for Epuron, easily one of the smartest adverts I’ve seen in a really long time (via Frederik Samuel’s always excellent blog). As if that wasn’t enough in the comments someone pointed out another excellent advert for the Dove self esteem fund. Excellent viewing all around.
Michael Moore was on Wolf Blitzer (he of CNN fame) and he absolutely destroys him. I love this sort of shit, as it’s extremely rare for it to be shown or for there to be a personality that can take it to the media and not have his voice culled in some fashion. He then goes back and breaks down their ‘report’ step by step including links to where he got that information. Kinda reminds me of that other great clip from George Gallaway.
You know when you’re in the dark about something and then someone wakes you up and you get that realisation that things could have been better, you just didn’t know any better, because nobody bothered to tell you about it?
What am I talking about? I’m making less sense than normal? I’ll tell you what I’m blathering about. I’m talking about how fonts are displayed on the four major web browsers, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9.
If you’ve visited the ‘kode in the last week, you’ll have seen some more changes in my every evolving design process. Currently I’ve given up altogether with putting a design mockups and opting for the completely different approach of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Subsequently I’ve decided to do things in glorious black and white and start thinking about colours and design elements once I’ve got the basic structure and functionality working as I actually want it. However what I have done is use fonts as big bold elements in the design, going above 16px font-size to bring things to the forefront.
Fortunately for me (as this is what actually opened my eyes) was that this effectively brings out the font rendering inadequacies in my favourite (and de facto) browser, Firefox.
Obviously all development occurs in this browser. Everything from the web developer plugin, to ruler, to Colorzilla to Firebug all live on this browser. You’d be taking a huge step backwards if you thought to design in another browser. However the font rendering is actually the worst of the entire lot. Notice the ‘o’s in the main title, completely pixerlised monstrosities. Have a look at the sidebar list of links. Those are meant to be bolder. The letter spacing however is in tack and is looks as it’s intended.
I’ve tried in the past to use this browser, but to be honest there wasn’t anything there that was bigger than Firefox which has been my de facto browser for many years now. Predictably this little browser renders the fonts in a very similar fashion to Firefox proper. It’s still choppy, no font smoothing at all. Surprisingly however it does provide a very slightly better rendering. The best place to notice this difference is if you take a look at the ‘a’s in Javascript.
What the Deuce? This is actually where all of this started. I inadvertedly launched IE7 and the fonts had rendered oh so much better. I was genuinely surprised. I consider this machine (my dad’s) as the vanilla machine. This is what the majority of people have, with respect to fonts, setting etc, in that they remain exactly the same. So imagine my surprise when the fonts were actually smoothed. Of course it wasn’t perfect in that it hadn’t picked up my letter-spacing which is annoying but alas at least they were doing something more right than Firefox, which I’ve got to say I did not expect to say. IE is one up on Firefox.
Which brings us to Safari. Oh dear. Remember that scene in the first ‘Matrix’ where Cypher is eating the meat and make a deal with Agent Smith and he goes “Ignorance is bliss” taking a big bite out of the steak? Man, that’s exactly how I felt after I had the fucking red pill. Seriously you need to have a look at this to believe it. The difference in rendering is unbelievable. Even though the design is as simple as milk, it actually looks half decent. There are different weights to different types of text.
The fonts are all smoothed (the only part that I felt was a bit off, but that’s only because I’ve been staring at this for a while trying to find faults) is the bottom of rounded characters which become slightly more blurred. I haven’t checked to see what other things this browser has to offer because I’m still a bit gobsmacked by the way it rendered a simple page. I understand that Safari is based on the same framework as Konquerer, is that correct?
While Safari doesn’t have the development community that Firefox has, it completely and UTTERLY trounces on it when rendering text. I think this should be the first thing that the Mozilla team address for the forthcoming Firefox 3. Forget all the other bullshit guys, this should be priority number 1 because you guys are trailing EVERYONE.
I’m looking at javascript libraries and it’s honestly proving a bit of an arduous task. We’ve got Moo.fx and Moo.fx2. The first has been superceeded by the second (obviously). Both it would seem can be used with prototype.js (or the lite version), however Moo.fx2 can be used as part of Mootools, and this is where things become more complicated.
Ok so you go over to Mootools and when you go to download the library, you get like 40 options (most of which I honestly don’t understand in the first place so you end up with something that is 42k rather than 3k).
It also seems less friendly than moo.fx on it’s own, but it does definitely look a hell of a lot more slick and polished and you can see a lot of time and effort has been placed into the overall setup of the information and the site itself.
However for a complete noob like me, it’s a bit overwhelming. So I decide, maybe it would be better to use JQuery. From first glance it doesn’t look as ‘polished’ in it’s overall slickness as the moo.fx but I know that WordPress, Habari and Drupal are going down this particular route in terms of their preferred library of choice.
Finally we’ve also got script.aculo.us as well, just so that we’ve got all our options in front of us.
Honestly I’m a bit perplexed as to what to go for. It seems that for a site, Mootools will provide all the kinds of animated effects that I could possibly want and the community behind this one is pretty strong with loads of documents and tutorials all over the place. However something tells me that jquery is the way to go, even though it’s not as flash. What’s a guy to do?
I honestly have no idea how I happened to get this togglegoogle on a couple of my machines (well not my machines but random machines at work, on my dad’s PC etc) but it’s a great little tweak to google which I actually honestly thought was part of their constant updates. For some reason it just organises everything very nicely. Also can someone please explain to me how to change the background in igoogle, because I was able to change the theme once and then the link that says ‘select theme’ is no longer a link.
In Greece for a little while. I’ve not been on any sort of break since November (even Christmas was a limited affair as I didn’t travel anywhere). I was kinda reminded why the hell I don’t like to travel, it’s all the airport hassle.
Get to the actual checking and I had the woman my passport and ticket and I’m just playing around with my phone while she checks the validity of all my information and whatever, so I take out my phone and start playing, to which she asks me to stop pointing my phone in her face, sorry what? That was weird.
Then I get to security check in:
You’re carrying two bags sir.
One is a bag the other one simple holds a laptop, nothing else.
Ok, put the laptop carrier in your other bag and hold the laptop.
Do you have any aerosol cans (which oddly enough you could buy within the airport terminal in any case). Taking off my shoes was something I’ve not had to do; I started thinking about how much more stringent things are becoming with respect to flying places and how much more of a fucking hassle the whole tedious process actually is.
Get on the plane, plastic food, rude air stewards, babies crying, shitty inflight entertainment, 1 hour waiting for you bags at the end.
God, it’s like pulling teeth. I’m only writing this for prosperity sake and to read back in a couple of years when flying will become even more unbearable as they being to anally probe you and make sure that you are completely and utterly incapacitated throughout the entire journey, and think about the good old days when all I had to do was take my shoes off.
Oh Brave New World.
Great little homebrew video of the Daft Punk song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” (via Chris Diclerico)
In ancient Athens, the single worst punishment you could impose on anyone was to exile them from the city; they were no longer Athenians. For the past 9 years I haven’t really considered myself an Athenian and more a citizen of the world. I can’t claim to be a complete Londoner. Could I ever truly consider myself as a Saidaewi (he who is from Saida)?
The real issue here is that I’m from all these places and yet I’m a mixture of all these places into one. Each place has had a direct influence on me. The people around me, the situations around me and my environment have all contributed to the person I am today. The added advantage I suppose of being from all these places and from none of them is the plane fact that I had what others that consider themselves from one particular city, country or village…perspective.
Because of my nomadic life, I’ve been able to gain a unique perspective of places and am able to not only appreciate all that is great and beautiful; but also what does not work and what could be enhanced or bettered. I don’t do this because of malicious intent, but rather the complete opposite.
The older I get the more I start believing that I am indeed a citizen of the world rather than confined to one place.
When asked whether he felt more from England or from Scotland, George Galloway responded:
Somehow that quote always resonates with me.
Kyle’s just launched his Organix redesign of Warpspire. It’s easily one of the most comprehensive redesigns I’ve seen in a really good long while. Great attention to detail and some very nice implementations of using javascript to bring content to the foreground without the initial clutter.
Rarely, someone says something to me that really resonates with me completely and changes the way in which I think. It’s not often, but when it is said generally speaking it will have a lasting effect on me for a great long time. One example of this I can give is when I saw Michael Moore in early 2003 when he was living in London and doing a serious of ‘talks’…more like sessions where he talked about whatever was on his mind. We were able to get tickets for his last ever performance. A lot of things stick out in my mind from seeing him live, but one of the things that he harped on about that remains in my mind is loyalty cards. I honestly thought these things where American inventions (as did most of the people in the audience as well), but apparently they are clearly a British thing.
For those wondering what loyalty cards actually are, they’re basically store cards that enable you to accumulate points which later on you can cash in, you get 1 point for every £1 you spend. Every 100 points you get £1 back or something like that. Anyway after his rant (which involved talking about people’s privacy and information theft and other some such) I’ve NEVER carried a loyalty card in my life… I didn’t carry many back then but I did have a couple, all where thrown into the crowd (he was collecting them back then).
Anyway recently Fern was talking about the amount of plastic that we as human beings use in our everyday life, for food packaging. Open your bags after you come from the store, if you’re as bad as I am, almost 90% of the stuff you’ve bought is covered in plastic in one for or another. Water, humous, vegetables, orange juice, etc. She then started talking about how there have been cases where the amount of plastic starts infiltrating your system, tiny particles that eventually make it to your eyes, which are then covered in a thin film of plastic.
Needless to say that sort of freaked me out and it’s stuck in my mind. Unfortunately I’ve got to work extra hard now to find a method to try and change the packaging in which I actually buy things, or consume thing. It’s incredibly hard, I’ve got to say. In my life I have boycotted several things. Coca cola (I used to drink 1 a day, at least), Marks and Spencers, Danone, L’Oreal , Nestle (except for Kit Kats) and a few other things. It was very difficult to do this but I managed and it’s a habit. How the fuck are you supposed to stop using plastic?
The good news I guess is that plastic is being made from things other than petrolum oils and rather using different more organic elements, however I’ve not really found out any more about it and so I sit here looking at my plastic containers thinking of my eye balls. Sometimes ignorance is complete bliss.
You know what REALLY pisses me off? I don’t know if this phenomenon has translated itself to other countries out of the UK, but over here we’ve got 16-19 year olds using their mobile phones as bloody boom boxes. I’m serious. It’s easily the stupidest thing I’ve had to experience in my life. We’re talking the tingy, shitty-sounding, bile-churning, ear-hurting-noise, blasting out of some of the shittiest speakers off some phone. See even if the music that they were blasting was the good stuff I’d still be annoyed. To add insult to injury, you’ve got some of the most unlistenable crap being pumped out and these assholes are actually comfortable in making the world listen to their garbage. I swear if it was me, I’d be pretty self conscious if I had such rubbish taste in music much less make sure everyone around me know it as well. I honestly have no idea what the appeal is? I know I’m not getting old because I’ve heard the complaint from a bunch of people of varying ages. Fucking morons. Smack!
Just sorting out the html and slowly hacking the css file. The idea is to slowly chip away at the actual code slowly but surely. I’m not in much of a hurry as I’ve got SOO much stuff left but I find that I enjoy writing more by actually having this new evolving design live.
I’ve never been anally probed (nor do I ever wish to be) but I doubt it feels quiet as bad as I feel right now. The Smashing Pumpkins are playing at Shepherd’s Bush as I type this. I was outside the venue trying to get tickets. Needless to say we didn’t get any tickets as they which were going for £150 each. Let me say that again, one hundred and fifty pounds each. Fucking touts. Seriously. I don’t have any overtly elaborate ways to describe what I’d like to do to you assholes because I’m pretty angry at the moment. I was there along with another 3 people who knew just how much I love the pumpkins trying to get tickets for me as well, but the tickets were ‘sold out’ in a matter of seconds. So how do these fucking shit-stain leeches on the green puss that comes out of a gangrene wound that’s eaten by a fly that’s about to die because it’s gotten violated by a camel get a hold of so many tickets between them?
And to pour piss and vinager over the wound, Pearl Jam played London Wembley Arena yesterday and I only fucking found out today. I’d have given my left nut to watch Pearl Jam live as I’ve never had the chance (even though a couple of years I was actually thinking about going to a festival just for them). Man that really upset me this afternoon when I found. Genuinely was upset about that. I didn’t think I could get more hurt but today was obviously just one big day of disappointments.
So what next? We’re thinking about going to the Reading Festival. That’s in August, however all the tickets are OBVIOUSLY sold out. Yeah of course. I doubt it would have made ANY difference if I had tried to get tickets on the day that they came out. So I guess Ebay is the only route forward.
This is part of the reason I don’t generally go to live concerts.
By now you’ve seen the latest news about the modifications to the Batsuit which looks brilliant and makes sense at the same time (to do with the cowl and the rest of the costume being seperate elements that overlap). The latest news that has come out from the upcoming Nolan sequel is the batpod. Now Michael’s not digging this and if you go down further neither is Joen, must be a Danish thing, nooch. The guys are missing the point here BIG STYLE. Nolan is a Brit. So what is the best selling British comic book? 2000AD. Who’s the star of that little weekly magazine? None other than Judge Dredd. And I believe that is where the mystery of this whole design lies.
The design is most blatantly inspired by Judge Dredd. Where the 1995 Sylvester Stallone movie made a complete farce of the hog (they made it fly for the love of god), this design is wearing it’s inspiration on it’s sleeve and for my money (as a comic book fan) it’s a great little nod to a character that has crossed over with Batman on NUMEROUS occasions, most notably in the excellent Judgement on Gotham with art by Simon Bisley.
The difference between the first Batman movies (which I actually rate) and the Nolan movie is that one is trying hard to be as realistic as possible, while the other is trying to be as stylish as possible. Each have their own place and I bet the affinity for the Burton stuff is because we all watched it when we were 10-12 years and Batmania was in full throttle during that year, but as movies stand, the Nolan movie stands WAAAY far above the rest of the Batman movies (we don’t mention Batman and Robin…..EVER). A huge amount of thought always goes into his movies and just because it’s a massive blockbuster doesn’t mean he doesn’t stay focused to make the ultimate Batman flick. That and I believe Bale is a much better suited Batman (and Bruce Wayne) than Michael Keaton.
It’s a funny thing about how much information your brain can actually hope to take in a single moment, a single day, or a single experience. For me this is made clearest when I go to Fopp. For those in the dark, Fopp is a store in Britain, which I believe (but this could be COMPLETE bollocks as Kevin told me this) started off in the back of this guy’s car in Glasgow selling music and other assorted greatness a reasonable, stable prices, without the stupid .99 bullshit. Yeah like 11.99 will make me think it’s £11 rather than £12 I mean seriously stop insulting my intelligence you asshats. Anyway, Fopp’s opened this massive megastore on Tottenham Court Road. This place is pretty huge. Originally I thought that was great. Bigger is better right? Wrong.
It’s completely overwhelming. I go in there and I’m completely lost in a sea of music and books that I have no hope of trying to whittle down myself. I end up actually buying nothing because I’m completely at a loss as to what seems like a good deal and what I feel I’d get just because it’s at a decent price. Also I don’t want to think about the range of stuff that I don’t get because I don’t actually see it.
Back to the original topic though, I’m glad when I found out that I’m not the only weird person out there that has people in his MSN contacts list. They’ve been sitting there for years and I’ve never once had the inclination to use the function to contact these people. I can’t explain it, they sit there and part of me would like to know what they’re up to but at the same time another part of me feels a certain comfort that they’re there anyway. It does sound strange and maybe a bit anti-social but like I said, your brain can only take on so much information, before it’s on complete overload.
Wall-E teaser trailer up. Wall-E is the new movie coming from Pixar next year. From the brief 20 seconds or so of actual Wall-E time it really does seem that this is the most detailed animated outing to date (check out the scene with Wall-E bringing up the dust around him).
Easily one of the best new animated characters I’ve seen in a good long while (I put him in the same league as Homer Simpson, Pinky and the Brain, Daffy Duck, Bender). Ryan game me the second season of Family Guy earlier this week and I’ve just caned the whole lot. Obviously the real star of the show is Stewie, the maniacal baby genius. Whenever there’s a show that’s got any decent amount of Stewie in it, you KNOW it’s going to be good.
It’s really strange but it seems to me that Fox gets some decent programmes made as pilots or proper TV series which are genius, they get this loyal following and then they cancel the shit, only to bring it back a couple of years later with their tails between their legs. In this case they canceled it not once but twice before bringing it back (the word dumbass comes to mind but hey at least they rectified the situation).
Why the hell didn’t anybody tell me how good this show actually was? I mean I’ve not watched Entourage, but that’s really my fault as people have told me it’s good so I’ve got no excuse; but Family Guy should have more people ranting and raving about it. Yes I’m blaming you. All of you. You know who you are.
Dammit Lois!!!
Dimension, the latest iteration in Opera’s incredibly cool mobile browser will be released on the 19th of June. For all those who are somewhat in the dark about this browser it’s one of the essential downloads for anyone’s mobile phone. The thing is the Opera guys and gals have been incredibly tight lipped about what the new features of the latest version is actually going to be. Personally I would like to have the option to see the ENTIRE webpage and then zoom into specific areas. Would DEFINITELY make my browsing experience that much better.
Also as I’m browsing on a phone, what I would also like is the option to SAVE things so that I can read them once I’m in a tunnel or something. It just kinda seems that much more logical. Cache has never been as important I don’t think.
Geeze that took a long time but I can finally report that I’ve actually sorted out the Kode’s version 6 mockup. Now you might say:
Ah patience young Padawin one, the significance here you see is the fact that this final mockup has only come after 21 FAILED attempts. 21 attempts, and iterations and tweaks and modifications. That’s an insane amount of time spent on designs that are not going to be used….EVER. Some of the ideas where pretty nice but the overall package lacked a je ne sais quoi.
So how is this interesting to you? Easy, I actually realised what I was doing wrong and to be honest it’s a fundamental element that I employ in all of my works that seemed lacking in this instance and I decided to go down a completely different route, one that was more clinical rather than conceptual as I usually do. I’ll try and elaborate. When I design or draw something, I usually think of a concept and run with it. I may be trying to emulate a specific feel or idea. Version 4 for example was influenced by my rereading Akira at the time. I loved the cables and the detail which is where that particular design came from.
For this one, I just wandered aimlessly. Moving from one idea that I thought was killer to the next. Sadly only some ideas were any good. In general I was missing the overall picture that combined the design.
A new Broken Kode will be appearing shortly.
Ice underneath the seats in the London underground? Summer is finally here and it’s pretty fucking disgusting on the tube. It’s hot, it’s stuffy, it’s sweaty and it’s 8:30 in the morning so the trains are rammed. It’s also more humid as well so people (myself included) are sweating perfusely. There’s been loads of talk about what to do about it, but it seems that there might be some kind of solution in the future. It’s an interesting solution and one I honestly hope actually works because there’s currently two ways people address the issue, and that is to effectively miss the traffic. Either get up earlier or go to work much later, but even then that’s not really addressing thet problem.
Okay, just to confirm to everyone that I neither care nor have I ever watched any of these stupid reality TV shows that try to make singing stars. I think they’re generally a complete waste of time, and apart from the odd clip of the truly terrible ones during auditions I have to say that I don’t care for this.
However, (yeah you knew this was coming), this little clip was something different. I’m not going to ruin it because to be honest you have to go in there without ANY expectations. Don’t read the comments, just click on the play button and watch.
Don’t ask me why but I actually felt teary during that. I swear, I have NO idea why and I’m kinda annoyed by it. Real men don’t get teary. Real men don’t cry :). I think it’s partly because I didn’t expect it to be honest but it’s a pretty cool little clip and maybe someone to look out for in the not too distant future, maybe?
That’s MUCH better. After the complete and utter BOREDOM that was the Monaco grand prix, the Canadian Grand Prix delivered in spades. I seriously enjoyed this race for more than one reason. I’m a bit disappointed for Nico Rosberg, whom I think is an exceptional little driver and seriously one of the future stars of Formula One. He had it there to be much higher up there, but alas if Mclaren can get it wrong for Alonso, I think I can accept that the Williams team fucked it up for him and caused him to get a 10second stop go penalty.
However good on Wurz for coming out of friggin NOWHERE and claiming third. The guy was 20th on the bloody grid. That is a superb drive all around, no matter how fortunate you get with the safety cars etc. Speaking of safety cars, 4 of them. There was more crashes in this race then I can care to remember. Some of them were seriously lame, others like Robert Kubica’s unbelievable take off into the walls was pretty scary. Crashes on the race track are only acceptable (it’s part of racing at 320km/hr) when the guy in the cockpit gets out shakes the dust off and gets onto a motorcycle back to the paddock. Good to hear that the man got off pretty lightly with just a broken leg. Ralf never really recovered from the crash in America a few years ago.
Tomorrow however you know that all the news will be on Lewis Hamilton’s maiden victory. It’s amazing if you think about it since he’s only driven 6 F1 races in his life, so rather than wait 100 races or whatever he’s had it in the first 6. That’s pretty amazing and probably going to raise all expectations that he could be a world champion this year. The thing is and I know it’s not his fault, but I’m REALLY starting to get pissed off at the ITV coverage. They’ll spend something like 30 minutes before the race concentrating on Lewis and asking the drivers and everyone about him rather than concentrating on other aspects of the sport and other drivers. It’s really over hyping and it’s just getting annoying. Yes he’s having an exceptional debut, yes the story leading up to him getting the drive is great, but honestly how many bloody times do I have to hear it again and again.
Well it’s been a bit too long coming, but I think I’ve found a theme that I can get to grips with relatively easily. I’m going to be hacking Depo Clean, adding parts of Fauna and some K2 in for good measure. I had a look at Sandbox and I’ve got to say that I was pretty turned off by the function.php file that they’ve added in there. It just makes the markup so much more difficult to understand at first glance which is what made me keep looking for alternatives that just did the job cleanly. In any case Depo Clean probably best resembles what I’m aiming for in the end anyway so it helps that I like the markup as well. The next time I do this I’ll be converting this markup into something that can be used with Habari.
Archie’s in town from Madrid, so we met up for some breakfast, shoot the fat, catch up since I haven’t seen him since December some time and I start telling him about my brother and how he’s moved back to Greece from the lovely and quaint place that is LA.
Actually scrap that, I was actually bad mouthing LA, but rather in that special fashion that I learnt from the great Bill Hicks. In fact I was probably trying to quote the man, and failing miserably I might add, but ultimately the gist was there for those to understand. Bearing in mind I swear like a sailor, the word shithole didn’t come out of my mouth, although that’s kinda what I was thinking about, but rather said it’s pretty terrible and the sooner it drops into the ocean the better this world will be.
Queue loner guy sitting just next to us (late 40s, early 50s, as he waves his hand in our general direction as in a manner of disapproval or something. Then he gets up and starts to talk to us. Man’s not from LA, he wasn’t from London, in fact I have no idea where he was from, but there he was and he’s talking and within a little while he started approving with our point of view. This is where the subject changed and from what I gathered he started to talk of some form of seminar that he runs or some such. Was he trying to recruit from the beginning? I honestly have no idea what he was actually talking about, at which stage it was time to go. London is a strange place.
So I’m standing the waiting line at Sainsbury’s (for those in the dark, it’s second largest supermarket chain in the UK), ready to buy my caramelised nut and jumbo flame raisin crunchy cereal, which I usually consume first thing in the office around 8:30ish. My overall sharpness isn’t exactly at it’s peak since neither breakfast or coffee has been consumed.
Anyway just before I walk into the store I notice a shifty guy walk into the store right behind me. I walk in and hear some commotion going on in the back of the store (it’s not very big at all). Security guard walks over to see what’s going on, shifty guy walks in the opposite direction towards the drugs section (it’s got your average painkillers, panadol, lemsip, cough medicine that sort of stuff), right next to it is the heavier liquor cabinet, JD, Johnny Walker, Cauntro that sort of shit. Shifty guy continues his shifty behaviour in front of the drugs section, sneaks his hand, grabs a bottle of booze and then goes out the front door.
Now I saw this, and I’m pretty sure everyone else saw this as well, since it was a pretty classic staged event to be honest, but I didn’t do anything about it, and nobody else did either. Now was it because we couldn’t be bothered? Probably. Was it because we were scared that the guy would come after us later on outside the store? Maybe. The thing is if it was a local store which was a family business then I might have actually said something. The thing part of me still feels a bit weak for not saying anything. We all know it’s wrong to steal, and it’s not like this guy was trying to get bread to feed his family or something. He was stealing to sustain his drinking habit, so he’s actively doing two things that I don’t agree with and don’t contribute to the world in anyway.
Interesting developments over at Six Apart. Lets dig up some of the things I said back in the day about this shall we. For all those in the dark, MT was the defacto CMS you would choose if you were in the market to get yourself a blog with comments setup on your server back in 2003-2004. Of course what happened was the Six Apart crew got a bit greedy at the time and all this free effort by the community was kind of slapped in their collective faces when they introduced the updated version 3.0 which was built off the backs of the community and sold back to them. The original pricing scheme was a complete farce but they revised it when they got the unexpected (erm yeah) response.
What this did was move all those people who were originally using MT to convert to an alternative. Some went to Textpattern, most went to WordPress.
3 years on, SA are now doing what they should have done way back for version 3 and maybe have kept some form of dominance. Currently however I feel it’s far too little too late. Do I give a shit about MT? Not really. I’m not interested in remembering how to write templates using MT-Tags and other bullshit. I’m not interested in revisiting the past. I will say however that the admin looks nice, and it’s also very cool that the actual engine dealing with that is the same as the one dealing with the blog itself, so I’m definitely going to bring that up with the Habari folk.
Ah yes, Habari, whatever happened to that initiative you might ask? Loads have been happening in the background but nothing massive for me to personally talk about. I’m sure once I get some more free time I’ll return to more active contribution and discussion, but I’ll leave that post for another day.
So I’ve decided on the final design (after something like 19 iterations all of which I will show everyone in due course) but I feel some of the html that I have been using on my site is slightly out dated since to be honest I have definitely not been keeping track of the comings and goings of the wordpress software and a lot of that code was based on practices of version 1.5 and before.
So the question I pose to everyone is what is the most up to date theme that has super simple html markup and most importantly doesn’t try to do too much. What I mean by that is a theme that has not been designed with additional cruft to include for an admin options panel, hooks for widgets that fit within wordpress.com etc. I’m not looking for a mod like K2, although I’ll be sure to have a look at some of the things done on K2 for inspiration. I’m looking for something that I can use and modify myself. The look is completely irrelevant as I’ll be dumping the css file straight away anyway and starting fresh.
Any recommendations ?
The new London 2012 branding was unveiled today and seriously, it’s very funny how the organisers have got this soo spectacularly wrong. I don’t even know what the fuck this piece of shit is actually meant to be (also check out the absolutely heinous website) .
Update: Seems they’ve launched the site 4 days early since they saw what an absolute pile of shit their ‘placeholder’ actually was. I mean my placeholder is not better but at least you can read the text and it doesn’t hurt your eyes from the sheer stupid colour choices.
I’m to understand that it says 2012 but I mean seriously, what the hell were they thinking.
What I find really ironic is how the British design press (Creative Review, I’m looking at you) kept harping on how the Athens Olympics logo just wasn’t all that great. Personally and I’ll admit that my opinion on the subject may be slightly biased but I thought the Athens Olympic logo was miles better, miles and miles better.
Now see that is bloody interesting. A month ago I kinda asked about whether or not people actually look at design or not. Since that time I kinda have this inprogress site design going on and have noticed my readership and hits to the site seriously fall by half.
So for all those thinking to themselves and wondering whether or not design is still important to traffic, hell damn yes it is important. You’re all fickle, you know that don’t you :). Which also means I’ve got to pull my finger outta my a$$ and just finish off the design, which I more or less completed as a mockup last week. So expect something soon.
I didn’t realise what the deal was with the season finale and I only watched the first half, thinking that was it. As I found out, the season finale is actually 2 episodes long, ooops. So here are my quick thoughts on the season in general and these final episodes:
So I’m reading the Eddie Campbell interview on CBR and he’s talking about his recent love for blogging. As such he’s still got that amazing enthusiasm for the whole experience that I feel, over 750 posts and three and a half years of doing this, I might have lost a little bit of it. I can’t imagine Broken Kode not existing in one form or another but it’s definitely not as regular as it used to be. However one part of the interview that got to me was when he says:
See that is a challenge isn’t it. Every day; something interesting. I’ve not had that sort of thinking in ages. Back in the day I used to wake up early blog for like 15minutes or something. Now instead I wake up in the morning and read my feeds. Expect a little bit more traffic from the Kode.
Oh my god I think I just wet my pants. I’ve not had this feeling in FUCKING YEARS!!!! Just downloaded the Pumpkin’s latest single from their upcoming zeitgeist and I’ve got to say it’s hot milk with honey on a cool spring evening. Seriously this song’s taken me back like about 10 years when music actually was exciting and actually inspired you to get on with things and actually meant something to someone like me.
Is it a return to form? Well from the very first beat which comes in with the UNMISTAKABLE Jimmy Chamberlin drum beat all the way to the slight guitar solo. The fact that there is no real chorus, but rather one long stream of song, all very definitive pumpkin songs. Billy’s mixed it in nicely with something new. He generally doesn’t get backing vocals or his own voice playing in the background as the next stage comes in so that was interesting to hear as well.
Also there’s something less sharp about his voice. He’s less angry and you can hear it but that just makes his voice slightly softer something as I grow older (and obviously him as well) makes the sound flow better.
Traditionally the single is always one of the better songs in the entire album but if the rest of the album comes close to this level then we’re in for a real treat.
Splash Panel podcast. Second podcast I’ve ever recorded, I talk about the podcast in general and how I got into comics in the first place.
Saturday evening, Jackie, Fern and I went to the 6th Annual Sci-fi and Fantasy Festival in London. This was part of the anime all-nighter. We started off the night at 12 and finished at 9am in the morning. I’ve never done this sort of thing but I’ve got to say that it was a lot of fun, mainly because I can say that I actually made it through and I only slept through one movie, which to be honest was pure garbage (I’m actually referring to “LE CHEVALIER D’EON”). That isn’t to say that there wasn’t any rubbish movies (fucking hell Highlander was utter shit), but rather I didn’t feel the actual urge and need to sleep through them.
All of that aside, for me however the night absolutely peaked with ‘Paprika’. I’ll go so far as to say that the entire night was worth it mainly due to Paprika. This is the new movie from Satoshi Kon. The man who’s given us Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers gives his best movie to date. He’s now in that league of directors that are truly destined for greatness. He’s up there right now with the likes of Christopher Nolan and Brad Bird. The sort of person that you actively hunt his older stuff because you want to see if there was genunie sparks of genius back then and he’s been building since then.
Having watched both Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers, I’ve got to say that Paprika is without a doubt his crowning achievement, so far (he’s still at the start of his game as far as I’m concerned). The highest accolade I can give this movie is that it is to Japan what Amelie is to France. Yes it’s that bloody good.
This movie completely captured my imagination. Right from the intro to the movie with the titles I knew I was watching something special here. It gave me that same warm feeling you get when you watch the Amelie intro for the first time (you know where she’s doing all these things that you used to do when you were a kid as well). In this case it just had this incredible charm to Paprika’s fleeting around the place dodging people who are chatting her up and getting around town.
So what is Paprika all about then? It’s very very difficult to explain to be honest as I will fail miserably since it’s a movie which is pretty difficult to put within a genre. However a brief synopsis (without any spoilers), a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment called PT has been invented. Through a device called the “DC Mini” it is able to act as a “dream detective” to view inside people’s dreams and explore their unconscious thoughts. The story follows (in part) Paprika, who is using the DC mini trying to help psychiatric patients.
The imagination in each frame is amazing. You’ll find yourself laughing out loud, smiling all the time. What’s funny is that the movie isn’t a sugar coated Disney fest. It’s just that the way in which the movie is told and the colours and characters and music all contribute to an amazingly uplifting experience. It’s a surreal journey where you actually understand what is going on at the end and are clamouring for more.
The other aspect of Paprika which I am incredibly impressed with was the score. Few people combine the movie with music very well, so much so that you are hungry to hunt down the music. People like Tarantino are masters at this, however the music in Paprika is so integral to the mood of the movie and really enhances every frame it’s unreal. The music is by one Susumu Hirasawa, and is an essential part of the success of the movie for me.
In the past few years I can point to a couple of movies that I have watched again and again and really enjoyed every time. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Clerks 2, Amelie, Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service. I can definitely add Paprika to that list when it comes out of DVD.
So I picked up the Guardian today, mainly for a CD which has excerpts of the ‘Great Speeches of the 20th Century’. They’ve posted those on their website, definitely worth a read (or a listening if you can) as there were a couple there that I’d never actually heard, just heard of.
Well for the first time ever, I’m actually going to be going through the live redesign process. Fuck it man, I’ve been playing around with countless photoshop mockups and NONE of them are really jumping out at me, so I’m just jumping into this with two feet and see where it all goes. I know there are some things I want in a certain way, so lets see how this all rolls out and how long it takes me to get to the finish line. It’s going to be sporadic at best, but hey it’ll be interesting to see how long this actually takes me.
So a couple of weeks back (maybe it’s more, I’ve got far more annoying things in my life at the moment to really remember the time lines for shit like this) Bryan’s girlfriend Jen posted on his website (that was taken offline at the time) that things were not going well with him at the moment and that Avalonstar might continue and it might not, and it was all terribly cryptic and oh so very very O_o.
What many of those outside didn’t see was what went on behind the scenes, on the 9rules member’s message board and obviously in many people’s email boxes. Scrivs is a bit pissed off at Bryan for many reasons and I got to thinking about this very slightly and I think there’s really two sides to this story with some leeway afforded to both parties, all depending on your perspective I guess.
So what’s the deal you ask? In a nutshell, we’ve got Bryan’s girlfriend posted that he (Bryan) was taking the site down for reasons undisclosed. Didn’t really say why or what the actual reasons were but I guess if you always have the worst thing on your mind you might be forgiven to think that there was some SERIOUS shit going down. Subsequently what happened, IMHO was COMPLETELY over the top. When people tried to contact him, they got no response, which perpetuated the worry/curiosity . Presents were discussed, wallpapers, cards, a website was built to make sure he understood that he had support. Does that sound a little overboard to everyone? I thought so too. I’ve got to say though it’s a terribly nice gesture and it shows that a community does exist for those in 9rules and that they are willing to support one another, which is kinda where some of the resentment is coming from I guess. All this support for false pretences of the equivalent of a bad hairday.
The thing is though, Bryan didn’t actually ask for any of this. Bryan didn’t say “Hey guys, see you later, shit has hit the fan, but if you feel the need to ask what’s going on, don’t email me because I’m not going to be discussing it at all, but email Scrivs, Tyme and Mike over at the 9rules network, or Jon Snook while you’re at it, since I’m part of that company, or Matt Mullenweg since I used to work for him.”
He didn’t ask for people to react in the way that they did. He didn’t ask for all of love that was sent his way (some would now argue that he doesn’t deserve that love anymore). I guess he couldn’t really predict what would happen or how things would shape out. Did he mitigate that? He did eventually but I guess based on the original reaction I guess he might have been feeling a bit like people were going to rip him a new asshole for being so melodramatic about the whole thing and therefore thought it best to keep shut and let people try and forget about the whole thing. Yes, he could have been a lot less cryptic in the first place and decided to take the site down and put it on hold and tell everyone that this is what he wanted to do for a little while because the design of the site was giving him some serious issues that he needed to sort out or whatever. He didn’t for whatever reason. It’s his site, he’s free to do whatever he wants. I mean Oxton did something similar a year ago or whatever.
The thing is that if you reacted to the message in any way, you reacted of your own accord. What I mean by that is that you chose to give this your time, effort and energy to whatever this situation. I personally chose to ignore it and I guess that’s why I don’t feel like my emotions have been cheated. I’ve been on the net a while and have read loads of things. Some nice things, some not so nice things. I’ve read about people’s mother dying, their wife having a miscarriage, loosing their jobs, divorcing one another and the list goes on. People sometime write about these things because it helps them get things clearer in their minds. Maybe helps them get over things. That’s part of what blogging is all about. I feel that when people are ready to talk about things on their sites they will do so (or not) in their own time. Once those things are open for discussion by the person that originated them then it’s an incredible boost if there is additional support from strangers on the net.
Having said all that, I can definitely count at least 5 people on the net that I’ve never met, and whom I may never meet (although it would be damn cool if we did in the future) whom I would really go out of my way to help them out if they so much as whispered it in my direction. These people I consider my friends, but I haven’t placed that level of trust with anyone. Like I said I’ve been reading and doing this for a while now that I know it’s a bit of a waste of time and effort to place that emotion for everyone and anyone, it can be misguided at best or make you feel cheated in the worst case.
Golden Compass Cut Sheet. I know they’re calling it the Golden Compass, but it my eyes it will ALWAYS be Northern Lights. I mean seriously I think that’s pretty fucking stupid calling it something completely different in America to England, but anyway. For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, go out and read the best book you’ve never read, Philip Pullman’s classic His Dark Materials Trilogy. Then you can come back and thank me for pointing this masterpiece out to you. I accept donations of all kinds.
Is it just me, or has the yearly ‘reboot’ phase kinda gone down like a bit of a whipper this year? I’ve read one website that I actually read participate in this year’s event. No the ‘Kode hasn’t really jumped into it this year, although I’ve been working on a redesign for a little while. The problem is actually two-fold. One is that I’m not feeling as creative as I have been in years past, and secondly I’m failing to see the point in doing this anymore as most people who read this don’t visit the site. They read it via their RSS aggregator. It’s only those crazy souls that come via search engines and actually typing a comment in here (I love you both, although those that leave a comment even more).
Does it matter anymore what my site looks like? I’m finding it hard to convince myself at the moment, and I’m lacking that dramatic flair and energy that is needed for a proper redesign.
I really don’t understand why it is that all Google applications are soo bloody fugly. I mean seriously. Joen recently blogged about being a Google boy and I was thinking the same thing, that I do actually use a lot of Google products. I’m using Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Sketchup (at work), Google Docs (not the spreadsheets part, although I’m not using it all that much recently) and I don’t know how many times I go to the Google home page on a daily basis. The thing that I’m definitely starting to get annoyed with however is the bloody ugly interface that they insist on presenting for all their applications.
Making these things nicer to look at will most definitely make them more enjoyable to use. What’s mind boggling to me is that not enough people are talking about this. Some people have even taken matters into their own hands and actually tweaked the design interface using greasemonkey and Firefox. It does the job for sure, but you’ve got to wonder what is actually holding these guys back from actually employing 15 Jon Hickes for like 6 months and making them work full time on revamping the interfaces so they’re actually properly designed.
You actually want to take on the big boys like all these people are hinting that you are left right and centre, you’ve got to be dressed for the part. What’s even more interesting to me is the fact that Google has got the money, they’ve got the bloody resource, they’ve got the knowledge. I’m not talking complicated code restructuring here (after all they’ve got the functionality down to a bloody art form); I’m talking about the CSS and the little jpgs, you know simple, basic, shit.
So what is it they’re afraid of I wonder? Every once in a while they’ll change something (like the recent Google images) and then change it back again, so it’s not like they’re afraid of rocking the boat. The thing is though I’m talking about rocking the boat significantly.
The more I write the more I start thinking about this, they’re not changing things because they feel they’re doing well with the ugly interface as it is. That can be seen (although I might be jumping the gun here) as a sign of complacency. Something that an IT company should NEVER, EVER do, is sit on their laurels and pat themselves on the back for a job well done, because guess what, someone else is trying to be one step ahead of them.
Case in point, Facebook. Now here’s a website that is designed VERY well. It’s simple and it’s friendly and is updated and new features are constantly added and the interface is tweaked and icons are designed. The site has a distinct look about it, that’s not in your face, much like Google. All of these ideas all definitely contribute to it’s increasing success.
So my request from Google is to listen to their designers, I know you have them, but at the same time I’m sure the ones that are employed have got their nuts neutered and have to design things to a stupid house style, with no clear reason why, which is a real shame for all of us.
I’m going to post a collection of one liners that are rattling in my head, probably going to make it into a regular sunday evening thing:
Thirteen Sense’s new album Contact came out recently. It’s easily one of my favourite set of tunes at the moment (listen to Spirals, it’s probably the best track on the album), and currently holding the title for the album of the year so far (that’s going to be replaced, I’m sure, by the Pumpkins in July).
Better Gmail. Ok so it’s not as cool looking as the Google Reader theme, but it’s a definite step in the right direction. My favourite part and something I really wonder why google hasn’t sorted out instead of just giving us more and more space is icons for the attachments. Such a simple thing and yet so essential to searching for things in a human fashion.
Google Reader Theme by Jon Hicks. Awesome doesn’t even begin to describe this. I wish someone would do something similar for Gmail, because there is just soo much cruft and rubbish in gmail. The code is great and the functionality is great but google couldn’t design themselves out of a paper bag in most cases. Their forte is making applications usable and fun but not pretty look at.
I got onto the scales this morning and swear to god I think I heard the scales sigh. When the hell did I gain so much weight? Over the last couple of months I’ve definitely noticed that my trousers have been shrinking in the wash more and more every day but I think yesterday I felt it the most. Summer is in the air and I’m the heaviest I’ve been in YEARS. Part of this I guess can be attributed to the general lack of exercise, another part of this can be attributed to the general amount of rubbish I’ve been eating at work, and even more can be attributed to the snacks I’ve been taking on in between meals, after meals and during meals (I know, how the hell do you snack during meals?).
Needless to say I need to do something about this and bloody soon. I’ve been down this road before, I’m prone to gaining weight, however I know EXACTLY what needs to be done to loose weight and sustain it for a good long time rather than these crash course diets. This isn’t for everyone, this is what has worked in the past for me, so I’m writing this down to make sure I REMEMBER my list every time I try and break it, and I will try and break it over the next week where my mood will no doubt be pretty foul for a little while until I get used to it all.
<li><p>Item two - This is an important one and probably the one that's going to be the hardest to maintain. Eat smaller portions. Don't get second helpings. It's OK to feel hungry every once in a while. There are loads of ways that will make you achieve this. Some have tried using smaller plates. I'm more of the thought that you should balance it out as best you can and keep it smaller than usual. </p></li>
<li><p>Item three - Eat everything I've been eating but with care to item two, however include for removal of deep fried things like fried potatoes, etc. Keep the bread consumptions down to a smaller amount, in fact a lot lot less. Don't eat the loafs, eat wraps exclusively and those Swedish style cracker things (they're not all that tasty but they give the impression you're eating bread and for next few months that should be ok, I've had my fair share of bread these last 27 years it's time to take a break).</p></li>
<li><p>Item four - Drink more fluids, cut the bloody sugar from the coffee and the tea. Four years ago I used to have 3 sugars in my tea and coffee, now I'm down to 1. I think it's time to cut it down all the way to 0. This is a small thing but I think one that I've been thinking about for a good long time and I think it's time I actually implemented, seeing as I'm on a roll right now anyway.</p></li>
<li><p>Item five - Last item, but definitely not least, I've got to get back to exercising more regularly. Currently I'll run sporadically and then I'll play basketball once every other week for a couple of hours, get a crap and generally be slow as fuck on the court. It's time to move it up a notch and have my 30 minutes run in the morning every morning. Combined with the above I'm pretty sure I can get to shape and loose the excess kilos that are hanging off me right now. </p>
Currently my target is 12kg. If I get there it’ll be the least I’ve ever been and the target weight I’ve always wanted to be. Traditionally the first 6kg are moderately easy as my body has store an immense amount of crap so it’ll shed that faster than the last 6kg which will be pretty tough to get rid of. I’ll keep everyone posted with mini posts from now on regarding my progress. Is there any clever little php scripts that I can record all of this down? I’m pretty sure I saw something on someone’s blog a while back that was tracking his weight loss progress as well.
So I’m talking to Fern yesterday on Facebook, and when I say talking I actually mean ‘Wall-ing’ her (yeah it’s not the technical term for it but alas it sounds funnier). Anyway, so she’s dissing 300 and calling it gay porn or some such rubbish, so we started talking movies. I asked her whether or not she was excited for the new Chinese flick that’s getting prepped for release in the UK this weekend, Curse of the Golden Flower. Her response, I’m quoting here:
See the thing is I’ve heard this kind of response nearly EVERY time I’ve asked someone Chinese about a Chinese movies that makes it into Western theatres. For most people the Chinese outbreak came with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee a few years ago. I was raised on a staple diet of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies. So much so that my parents have had to watch Drunken Master 1 & 2 several times over with me because I kept renting it from the video store again and again, mainly because I’d seen all the ones in the store and because I loved the interaction with his Master when he was training him. I also loved the food scenes, where you know he’s going to eat the entire house, then get drunk, then not have any money to pay then have a big massive fight. To be fair though I’d not really experienced the full extent of Asian cinema, not by a long shot.
So today I decided to goad Irene into telling me what the deal was with the dislike of Chinese people to exported certain exported Chinese films. So she gave me the standard foreigners line, followed by a curve ball (I’m not actually quoting Irene here but work with me people I’m getting to my point):
That’s fucking interesting. Where the hell are they? What are they called? What’s the deal? Name them. Of course they’ve all got Chinese names. C’mon guys it’s not my fault I’m not Chinese, I’ve come to accept that you’ll never hand me the Chinese menu at the restaurant (you know the one with all the authentic good stuff), why are you being stingy with your bloody cinema and tv programmes?
So I’m asking everyone that knows of any good Chinese series (preferably set in the Emperor Chinese era) that are actually ‘good’ and not for foreigners (but with subtitles) for me to get into. After all Battlestar Galactica won’t be back for like at least 6 months, Prison Break won’t be back for a similar amount of time and Lost can only keep my attention for like 45 minutes a week.
First look at the original Iron Man grey suit. I’m actually really looking forward to this. A marvel movie that doesn’t completely suck. To be honest ever since X-men 2 and Blade 2 the Marvel movies in general have been a let down. So much so that I’ve not seen Elektra, Ghost Rider or Fantastic Four.
Red State? Kevin Smith’s new movie is going to be a ‘horror’ movie? Seriously didn’t see that one coming. How’s he going to put Affleck in that one?
Seriously, don’t bother reading this because it’s going to be one long boring diatribes of bollocks with me smack in the middle winging and wining about something. I’ve not really had the chance to formulate the post at all in my mind and I’m doing what I used to do years ago on this blog, which was to just write the first shit that came to my mind. If you’re looking for quality then I can hardly promise you that with this post, so take that as your warning.
I guess my completely FOUL mood can be attributed to several things kicking about the place, so in no particular order.
<li><p>Is it work that's got me pissed off? Well I've been working 150% for the past couple of years. Honestly I don't remember the last time I actually had a relatively easy week at work where I wasn't being asked to issue something or upsetting people because I didn't get things I promised them in time or whatever.</p> </li>
<li><p>Is it the fact that I seriously need some holiday time off? Well that's fucking great, I need to go to the Greek embassy again and get myself a Visa. Yeah getting treated like shit for 5 hours seems like a great idea for me, after paying a tenner on a god damn phonecall where they'll tell me to come and visit them in 6 fekking weeks???!!!!! </p></li>
<li><p>Is the woman situation (or lack thereof) starting to piss me off, what with a string of false starts? I mean seriously this is starting to put even an natural born optimist like myself in slight (notice the word slight) doubt.</p></li>
<li><p>Is it the website design that I can't seem to pull off in a way that I'm happy or moderately content with that's annoying me; is it the fact that I've had to switch back to fekking windowz for the love that is holy because Adobe still don't seem interested and probably never will port Photoshop over to Linux? What about Pixel Beta fucking 7 that doesn't EVER want to come out?</p> </li>
<li>
Fuck it dude, lets go bowling.
Ok if in case you didn’t read the title of this post, it has the word spoiler in it for a reason, not interested in finding out what has happened on the end of the third season then pretty please with a cherry on top go somewhere else and you don’t ever need to blame me for ruining anything for you. Good everyone else here?
Watched it yesterday and I’ve got to say I was pretty damn excited about this episode. I got back home at a normal time and went straight to downloading the episode. All the while I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The big massive revelation; who is the Cylon, who is the Cylon. I don’t get one I get 4 of them, definitely didn’t see that one coming, especially Saul as one that’s come out of NOWHERE. I’m sure they’ve thought this one through, but seriously how the hell does that actually work? He’s like over 50 years old and that’s how old the Cylons are right? At least that’s what we were originally led to believe.
So I did a bit of researching. Ron Moore’s podcast isn’t up on the scifi channel yet however if you look around you’ll be able to find a couple of interviews scattered around the place where he talks about things.
The biggest twist of couse was definitely Starbuck’s appearance at the end of the show. I honestly didn’t expect that. I’ve got to say that while listening to Ron’s commentary regarding the reasons to kill off Starbuck never rang true with me. It seemed as though it was all about the AUDACITY of it all, which felt a little bit on the weak side. It’s nice to see how they’ve pulled one of the best cons in recent television history. ‘Kill off a character’, have actress in on it as well so all her interviews point that she’s going to be moving on, don’t insert her name in the credits of the actual episode and then have her come back right at the end. Of course there are a lot of unanswered questions but it’s definitely one of the better endings on the show which always has pretty spectacular cliffhanger season endings.
Also I really loved ‘All along the Watchtower’ cover by Bear McCreary and his brother, definitely will be getting that once it’s available from somewhere.
Frank Miller’s 300 had my money several times over from the moment I heard it was going to be made. Then came the trailer and I nearly came in my pants several times over (I know not a pretty vision but at least I’m being truthful). Then I shared the trailer with Stathi and Christos and while I thought I was excited, these guys were even more excited about this movie than I was. Honestly between the three of us we’ve probably seen the trailer like 3000 times.
I can’t count the number of times we’ve quoted the lines:
So to say that we were completely hyped for the movie is a slight understatement. So how do we celebrate this momentous occasion of the release of 300? We book the top section of Everyman cinema in Hampstead (much more about this glorious cinema theatre in a moment) and pack it with 40 something Greeks. To say there was a bit of atmosphere in the theatre, is once again a slight understatement. Half of us screamed the above line when Leonidas said it.
It’s strange but one of the things that annoys me about cinemas is that the experience seems to have been diluted. I’m talking in a general sense here. It’s no longer something special, it’s no longer something that is truly an experience in every sense of the world. Thank god someone remembered this and made the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, North London. Basically it’s very small little venue however there are different levels of seating throughout all of which are larger than usual, with little tables to the side of them. The side seats are leather with foot rests and all of them have champagne bottle holders. The ambience in there is amazing. Seriously I kept looking at just how beautiful the place was and how great all the colours worked together seamlessly. The screen isn’t the largest, the sound isn’t this amazing THX (at least I don’t think it is) but it’s definitely one of the best cinema’s I’ve ever been to. This enhanced this movies completely for me even further than if I watched it in your run of the mill movie theatre.
The story is a timeless one, depicting one of the greatest if not most important battles in history, completely stylised of course with loads of magicians and huge monsters people and weird freaks, however believe it or not it’s not the story that counts here but how it is delivered. You see this story has been told several times before, however never like this. Some of the fight scenes in here are some of the most brutal you’ve ever seen in a swords and sandals epic. Forget all the rubbish that is Troy and Alexander and open your eyes to 2 minutes of pure Spartan maddness cutting through one guy after the other. Then chilling out and eating an apple over the dead. It’s meant to be over the top. It’s meant to be completely manly in nature. The dialogue just drips of testosterone and I think that’s one of it’s greatest qualities. You don’t get enough movies where the guys are completely hard as nails.
A distinct success of the movie was use of colour filters throughout the movie. From the soft yellows used for Sparta to the blues used for scenes with the Immortals. The darker browns used for the fight scenes made the red capes sand out even more. Make no mistake this movie isn’t for everyone (although I wish it was). For a start it’s an 18, which means this movie is violent, has got scenes of a sexual nature (read: soft porn) but there isn’t any real swearing as Miller didn’t really have any of that in his book.
From a comic book point of view it was completely faithful to the style. The additional areas were actually very very well done. The scenes with the Queen showed just how hard she was. It was an welcome addition to the story while I am a purist in these things I think if it’s scenes that don’t take away from the actual original source material then I have no problems with it at all.
Definitely one of the more interesting takes on ‘supporting’ the troops I’ve read in a while. Fundamentally the question is flawed. I come from a country, and was raised in another one, which both had mandatory conscription. The mantra always was:
The reason was simple, in the army you take orders and you do as you’re told. The thing is though, and this is only starting to take form in my head as I’m writing this, does this mean that by joining the army you believe in the path that your country takes when employing said army?
I’ll be more specific. After University the plan was ALWAYS for me to join the army. Now I’m not a violent man however I felt that the Lebanese army wasn’t going to be taking over the world any time soon. By joining the army I would be part of that group of people that would try and defend the country. It wasn’t an agressive force, but rather a force for protection. Regardless of how effective it is, it seemed like I wouldn’t be expediting my morals. I wouldn’t be asked to take over countries and fight for imposing my country’s opinion for someone else’s, as I have seen what that actually means unlike the plethora of idiots that support war, in ANY form.
Which brings me to the American troops. When you join the American army you really should know what that actually entails. You join on your own free will. It’s not mandatory, but rather a decision you make in your life. When you join the American army you KNOW that there is a REMOTE (read the sarcasm) possibility that you will be sent in to take over countries, in a hostile manner. You will be sent in to ‘fight for the good guys’. You’d have to be pretty ill informed not to know that little fact that you are not a peace keeper. You are not a defender in the traditional sense, you are part of the aggressors. Oh sure you are given to believe that what you are doing it the righteous thing, however I don’t agree with this as the proof is in the results. History keeps repeating itself time and time again and history has definitely not been kind to American foreign policy.
Yes I know that there are some good guys in the army who just want to make sure that their country is defended properly, however going into all other countries and destroying them does not in my book constitute as defending anything. Of course the obvious question is doesn’t America need an army? You cant' join the army and say you don’t want to be stationed anywhere but in America, that’s not how it works, which I know. As a human being though I make my decisions and I live my life based on those decisions I make.
By joining the army and going to Iraq, you’re not defending your country, you’re defending you’re country and it’s business partner’s financial interests. That puts you in a group of people that I cannot offer any support towards. That might seem harsh, but the truth of the matter is you have MADE the decision to continue to give your LIFE to a group of people (be they the government or the army itself) who is there to exploit another group of people, not to defend.
Massive shout out to Jos Buivenga over at Exljbris for the truly excellent and awesome fonts he’s got on offer for free. When he says “Quality Free Font Foundry” he’s seriously not lying. Excellent stuff. I love Delicious and Fontin are both fonts that I’m going to definitely try and use in a future iteration of the ‘Kode.
Great little interview with Jakub Steiner and Andreas Nilsson over at Gnome Journal. The most interesting part of the interview was this little side project, Art Libre Iconset. An integration of Gimp, Inkscape and Scribbus would be great, not that I use Gimp (but that’s another post for another time).
Smashing Pumpkins, Zeitgeist will be out on 07/07/07. I remember where I was the last time an official Smashing Pumpkins album came out. Actually this is a funny story, not haha funny but funny. The pumpkins believe it or not where not all that massive over here in the UK, even at their absolute height (you know that Today Today song, or was it Tonight Tonight). Eh, well for those that knew good music sure they were up there but most people over here back then were still into brit pop and the Britney Spears rubbish was starting to take form as well.
So there I was one of the few rangers that had this unhealthy obsession with the pumpkins. Something about their music seriously struck a cord with me (no pun intended). It was like well I could hear the genius in everything they did (except the James Iha stuff, that was always a bit too, soft for me, which is weird since he went on to join A Perfect Circle who are anything but ‘soft’), anyway I digress.
It’s a Sunday and everything shuts at like 10 oclock in Nottingham. I do mean everything. The thing is though the last official ‘new’ album Machina the Machines of God was actually released on the same day as some Oasis album. So HMV had this promotion going on where if you came into the store at midnight you’d get the album a full 8 hours before most sane and normal people would get it, but the real cherry on the cake was the fact that they were handing out these promo cds as well which were limited to the first 100 or something like that. Was I there? You’re damn straight I was.
Thing is there was a bit of a problem with transport. Like I said it was all about Nottingham, 10 oclock on a Sunday everything is shut, even the fekkin buses. Dunno if this has changed or what, but I walked from the house on Cycle Road into town. I’m walking down Market Street (for all those people who are into comic and CDs, you’ve got the BEST comic book store in the UK, Page 45 and one of the best music stores in the UK Selectadisc) at least they were there when I was walking down the road to buy the latest pumpkins CD and it was about this time when I saw the craziest shit I’d seen up until that point in England.
2 guys in a Taxi cab driving up the street, I’m walking down the street. The guy in the back seat of the cab starts pummeling the guy in the front of the seat. I can’t remember completely but the cab driver took his hands off the driving wheel to try and calm the two idiots killing each other in his car. I think the cabbie also took his foot off the pedal so the car started rolling back down the hill. Obviously the guy has no where to go so he takes a few hits to the head and then he opens the door to get out, CAR IS NOW MOVING BACKWARDS. I think he just manages to either get out of the door’s way or to go under the door (and I could be making this part up but it happened so quickly that I think I can be excused if I fuck up my story ever so slightly) but he’s on the floor now and the car accelerates backwards and turns straight into the glass facade of a shopping centre (I think it was Debenhams, not sure). Glass everywhere, cabbie has his head in his hands, but the guy that started the fight hasn’t finished. He gets out of the car and starts looking for bits and pieces off the ground, bits of car, whatever and starts throwing them at the other guy who’s in the middle of the road.
All this is happening with me walking past them which my umbrella (hey it was raining) and a bit of ongoing traffic. For those thinking that this was in some back alleys or something like that, think again, this road is literally off the main square, the police where in the corner having their teas and telling drunken girls to go home rushed over in like 10 seconds. I just walked on, glad to not have been caught up in the foolery and promptly bought my CD.
I miss Nottingham, always had a bit of colour, but most importantly I miss the Pumpkins. It’s good to have you guys back.
Blender 2.43 was released today. To my mind (and I’ve said this many times before) is the most professional open source project EVER. This is how open source should be. Every release is golden, and this one is a keeper. From the new website, the excellent release log, feature videos and the list honestly goes on. Download it NOW!
Battlestar Galactica season 4 official press release! It’s about Frakking time they made this official. After last month’s story on cbr that they were thinking about cancelling the series this is good news. Notice the rubbish about it being renewed for at least 13hours though. What’s that all about? Those assholes got it wrong the first time when the first series aired in the UK for the first time because they thought it wasn’t going to do well in America.
Honestly, I’m amazed by the quality of the Zotero plugin for Firefox. Zotero is a little plugin that enables you to collect and store information, tag it and a whole lot more for all your research needs. Easily one of the best plugins for Firefox I’ve stumbled on in a long time (I’ve seen it before but this is the first time I’m actually using it so that makes it different in my eyes).
The more I think about this the more embarrassed of myself I feel. Basically I sat down today to take stock of what I should be doing in my free time (yes I have to have to be doing something in my free time, I bore extremely easily). I decided earlier last month that I was going to finish off my commitments from last year as soon as possible.
These are basically Priya and Stathi’s websites. For the eagle eyed of you, if you go over to the illustration section of the site you will see the very first completed illustration of 2007 (the first of many to come I hope). It’s the basis for Priya’s website which I should go live by the end of the week (make a deadline public therefore making sure I deliver, nice). I’m about 50% into the coding; it’s a simple website that really should not have taken the stupid amount of time that it has taken but alas better late than never. Also by next week I should have the next illustration up there as well (it’ll be the basis for Stathi’s website) which is definitely one of the most detailed sites I’ve worked on in a very long time.
After which I will only delve into the world of websites when I’m fucking about with my own web space. It’s funny but the code that is currently running the site was originally written nearly a year ago and it’s been tweaked slightly over the year. I don’t really intend to screw around too much with the site to be honest but the colours and graphics will be changing in the coming months as I delve deeper into Aitus Moralis; this is the tentative title (and may end up being the actual final title) of my first graphic novel and my next confirmed project.
I knew the basic idea of the story and remembered that I had actually written something for it, but I honestly couldn’t remember what I had written. It’s not until today that I really realised just how much work I’ve completed over the years and just completely forgotten about. I’ve got flash trailers, sketches and pages upon pages of research and script already written. My life on the internet has seriously been one MASSIVE detour for my honest true passion, sequential storytelling.
So today marks the first day of the journey into getting published. I’m not going to hide it, I want to publish my book via Image Comics. I want the ‘I’ on my book. I know it sounds strange but while the older generation was into Marvel and DC comics I have always been a follower of creators. I guess that’s what’s I was raised on in the 90s. The pundits can say what they will about the 90s, it had a lot more creator owned books than what we have now. Oh sure a lot of it was pure garbage but at least it was the creator’s garbage and the stuff that was weak has and will never be seen again, I intend for “Aitus Moralis” to not fall down that stupid path. I want to own my book’s destiny, because honestly I wouldn’t allow for any other monkey to touch it. All monkey business will be under my control.
Lofty goals I’m sure but it’s a dream I’ve had since I was 13, so it’s about time I delivered and reached.
I will be peppering the site with sketches and designs and drawings from this series as the Kode starts to shift slowly but surely into that direction. Coco will be making his exit and I’ll be moving him over to Splash Panel as he will be the official mascot for Splash Panel. The logo might change slightly in the future to be honest to tie better with the new graphical direction which will be decidedly less vector and have a more painted feel to it.
Interesting article on the Guardian regarding the new UK mac adverts, some valid points while others seem like their there to goad people into a reaction.
Let me start off by saying that Inksmith is what I view as my biggest online failure, after a fashion and this is what this particular post is about. Whenever I announce a project or something I usually deliver, notice I said whenever I announce a project. I may be a blabber mouth an I do get excited about things and have the urge to talk about them, however I never announce until I’m 100% certain I’m going to follow through (seriously if I didn’t do that I’d be writing this sort of shit all the time).
I might take some time to bring it forward (usually I take a lot longer that I could possibly want) however the fact of the matter remains that I will see things through. It seems that ever since the ‘announcement’ of Habari a few moons ago, some have brought up Inksmith as a way to bring discredit to Habari (at least the negative connotations that Inksmith is presented in infers this). It’s as though the fact that nothing moving forward on Inksmith is telling of stuff that might not happen on Habari, which honestly is the single most preposterous idea I’ve ever heard. These are two very very different things and I find those that mention them as though they’re linked in the same way done so as an act of ignorance/stupidity/lack of understanding etc. Here’s why.
The first fact brought forward is to understand what the two things actually were. Inksmith simply was an idea to create a community for bloggers. No this wasn’t a rip off on 9rules. I wasn’t creating a blog network but rather an area for bloggers to get around and be themselves. Oh sure there wasn’t really a central theme for us to bandy around, but what I wanted was a nice buzzing community that helped each other out and was open for people to get to know each other re our love for blogging. It wasn’t ground breaking and it wasn’t anything crazy, but it would have been fun and loads of the guys where well up for it. The best part of it all was the pictures on the coming soon site. I really liked the fact that we were all pissed off in those photos. It delivered what Inksmith was all about, angry people on the internet venting :).
So where does the similarities lie you ask? As far as I can tell it’s the fact that some of the names attached to one project are now attached to another. So does this mean I’ve tarnished the credibility of the others on that list (since it was my idea)? Maybe and I guess they are the only ones I owe an apology to, because I didn’t deliver on my part of the bargain, so to everyone that was attached to the Inksmith project I apologise profusely. Let’s get something clear here, if I ask someone to be part of something I take their commitment seriously. I generally don’t like to waste ANYONE’S time as time for me is the most important commodity. So I genuinely feel bad about wasting those people’s time. We had some great discussions and it did prompt a lot of people on the internet to discuss the deal with being anonymous on the internet and using handles.
Why didn’t Inksmith take off? Because I didn’t have the energy to kick it off. 2006 was one of the toughest years on me from many many respects. In fact from May onwards I can definitely consider 2006 as one of the darkest times in my life from many angles. Which is actually reflected in my blog. What, you think that the dark motif was because I was joining in with the trend for darker sites at the time? No, Broken Kode is an extension of me and it reflects my mood in many cases. When my mood changes so to does the colours on my site, and the design itself in many respects.
So why didn’t I get Inksmith started? Honestly it came down to the amount of energy and enthusiasm I had to provide for the project, which after completing FOFR and Shuttle and 2 websites for clients and my on website and a bunch of illustrations I just didn’t have any more to give, until I was in Greece in October/November. At that point I had charged my batteries and I had decided that it was time for me to pull my finger out and build Inksmith all over again. For all the negative assholes that don’t believe me here’s the logo I created on the plane back to the UK:
So why did I stop that momentum? Simply put because the day I got back from the UK Chris had emailed me about Habari. In Habari I basically found another way to solve the problem that I wanted Inksmith to solve in the first place; the difference of course is that we’d have a central idea to gather around and that would be the software.
The community coming together around Habari is one I’m very proud to be a part of in the first instance. Final word to those that decide to put Inksmith in my face one more time, seriously try and do something constructive with your time, I know I am.
Forest was back in town for the weekend and we were catching up as I’ve not seen him since the summer. We’re shooting the shit and he asks me how my artwork and design work is going. Of which I had to answer with the truth, in reality it’s not. Oh yeah sure I’ve recently been playing around with Habari, but to be honest Habari is a hobby which I’m enjoying being a part of, but I wouldn’t say it’s stretching my artistic muscles. It’s definitely making me take a much more pragmatic approach to design and I’ve done this before but I know when my artistic muscles are being flexed and sadly I can’t really claim the last year to have provided me with any level of truly artistic expression and in talking with Forest I kind of inadvertently voiced the reason why.
I’ve heard in the past that there are two sides to the way the brain works (I could obviously be making this shit up so if you’ve got links whatever please do send them over) in that it’s operates and functions with practicality in mind, maths, engineering, science. And then there is the creative side of the brain. These two areas don’t cross over very often but when they do you get freaks of nature like myself who do engineering by day (so it’s all about calculations, making things work/fit) and by night I draw and I create, or at least that’s what I thought I could do easily.
The harsh reality of the situation however is that I’ve obviously FAILED in that respect (chalk another failure on my part, one of many in my life) What I’ve found to be the case however is that if I’m submerged in engineering, my other drawing energy and concentration seems to disappear. I guess much like many people I need to be in a particular frame of mind. The music that I’ll be listening to has to inspire me as well (I draw a lot better when I’ve actually got music I’m really into at that particular moment in time); my mind has to be a blank, and I have to have focus. Cutting my drawing based on pesky stuff like eating and sleeping is the bane of the entire exercise to be honest.
So what’s the solution you ask? Well now that I’ve ACTUALLY identified the problem (which I always knew but I’ve not properly voiced until now) it’s really up to me to MAKE the time for drawing and retrain myself to my current situation. Originally I thought I’d have trouble finding the time to do all these things. See it’s not a question of whether or not you have the time to do something (at least that’s how I see it), the harsh reality of a busy working life is that you’ll never find the time. It’s up to you to seriously make the time and it’s up to you to train your mind and schedule your time in such a way so as to accommodate those things that you want to do. My problem it would see is my psychological status and my willingness to tackle the creative avenue in front of me.
So it’s time to be pragmatic about things one more time and really put in the hours of building and creating once again. Hopefully that’ll manifest itself in several unfinished projects that have been laying around the place in the attempt of making them a reality again.
It’s been a truly exciting time for Habari on the design front (not that it’s not been exciting on the code front, but I can only really properly comment on all things design to be honest). Since the last time we talked, Michael has been a busy boy with absolutely everything under the sun. All these ideas have been filtering through the designs as we build towards a unified look for the administration panel.
Remember these mockups are just that mockups, we’re still meandering trying to sort things out, this is an open design process so things are going to change. Don’t think that what you see here is gospel and how it’s going to be, don’t be quoting me fekking Jakob in my face about usability and whatnot. These are the formation months, trust me we’re going through MANY MANY loops and discussions. So with that in mind let’s begin shall we.
Stage One:
Final Stage:
We’re still playing around with loads of things here. The header and footer are still up for discussion but the main ideas are there. We’re definitely going for the easiest installer award with this release.
Michael’s been pretty busy and he’s got his ideas regarding the media browser on ‘paper’. Once we’ve ironed out all the kinks and how it’s going to work I think it’ll be the most special media browser on any blogging platform.
We did have a great deal of interation of ideas between us on the logo. Work is still ongoing in this area and probably will be for a little while longer as we try and find ourselves the best fit for what the logo means to the community and how people will view us effectively.
Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!
Anna kept telling me to watch this series again and again. I do actually remember the TV spots for this series, which preceded the actual series being broadcast over here in the UK. I remember really thinking the idea was very intriguing however as you can imagine I completely missed it, since I’m honestly not very good at keeping to a schedule brought about by the TV box. It’s funny but I’ve watched more TV in the past couple of months than in the last few years, mainly because I can download and watch whenever I actually choose to watch them.
Anyway back to Prison Break; without a doubt one of the smartest and most gripping TV series ever made. I know bold statements but this is a very very different kettle of fish to all other great TV series of the past year or so (we’re talking Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Heroes, My Name is Earl etc). What makes this series so damn special? I guess part of the success in my eyes is it’s incredibly tight plotting.
The story centre around Michael Scofield (fantastic name, best one after McGyver) who orchestrates him being admitted into prison so that he can save his brother who’s on death row. Already the story resonates with me because it’s taken the prison story and flipped it in a direction I’m not used to. We’ve seen several ‘prison break’ type movies in the past (led of course by the exceptional Shawshank Redemption) but not exactly like this.
See Michael’s had a while to prepare for this. He’s put contingency after contingency after contingency. The really amazing thing is of course that absolutely EVERYTHING he’s planned gets a spanner in it at the end of every episode. The cliffhanger endings are pretty amazing and the tension is exceptionally well produced. There are several exceptional twists within the story and I think I counted one scheme where the acting was terrible (but that was from a supporting actor rather than the main cast).
Which leads me to the actors themselves. All the cast is exceptionally well chosen for their roles which is weird as I’ve not really seen (or can remember) seeing them in anything prior to this.
I love that the warden is actually a good guy. I think there was only a single moment in the entire first season where I thought he was a building up to being a bastard and I guess that’s another definite asset of this series, not following with specific stereotypes that I’ve become used to. Obviously the fact that the guy’s an engineer resonates with me a little bit (ok a lot) and it’s great to see how he gets himself out of one bad situation after another.
Ultimately however this series is about what one brother will do for the other one. The answer is a lot and those who have brothers understand this pretty well. Growing up you might want to kill each other or were constantly bickering about stuff, but ultimately after everything you knew that you couldn’t stay mad with each other for more than like 10 minutes. What impresses me the most about the story is when you finally are told the WHY. Why would Michael risk EVERYTHING he had, put himself through hell, enter prison to save his brother. Apart from the fact that it’s his brother, what would possess him to take matters in his own hands like this. The answer is basically the core reality of what brotherhood is all about. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone because I really loved the explanation and I think you’ll feel the same way.
This is the first (hopefully) weekly instalment of the comings and goings on in the Habari Design Community. As this was our first week ‘out’ it was obviously a pretty wild and exciting ride with an immense amount of interest from all people around the world. What’s fascinating to me is that the people at the table currently trying to shape the design aspect of Habari. We’ve got Michael and myself working on all things admin at the moment, with comments from the entire community. Bryan Veloso has joined the team and he’s going to be handling all the website related stuff (from main site to wiki design to whatever the hell else we can keep him busy with) and we have the truly talented Yoram who’s kindly offered to do the icons, so as far as I’m concerned we’re in pretty good shape regarding the graphical direction the project is going to have.
We’re still hammering through these back and forth, but the idea is there, one click install, degradable JS that makes parts of the install appear as and when the previous section has been completed and verified.
Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!
It’s been one hell of a couple of days since we first talked about the Habari project. There’s been a slew of reaction to the news all over the internet (go to the pingback section of that post) and to be honest it’s far exceeded all expectations I could have had because I honestly don’t have any. See I wasn’t completely sure how everyone would react over the news and therefore I was preparing myself for a little bit of a fight, in so much that we would have to prove the meritts of the software before we got people actually wanting to join and help build the community.
This in turn got me thinking to what all this meant and so I’m writing this post for several reasons. A couple of them is to dispell any rumours, a few others is to point everyone in the right direction should they want any more information, while others is to address concerns I’ve heard from people over the last couple of days.
There’s been a lot of speculation as to why we’re doing this. I’m not going to speak for the others (because they’re doing a pretty good job of it themselves to be honest) but I’ll tell you why I’m doing this. I’ve been talking to (read: boring) many of my offline friends with just how cool this is going to be. The first thing that they ask me is “Why the hell are you doing this to yourself? Why are you working for free again? Why are you spending your free time doing this?” I can only answer by saying that it’s incredible fun to be part of an online community of like minded people who are trying to make one of my favourite pastimes (ie blogging and tinkering with my website) a more enjoyable experience. I love being involved in open source projects and this is without a doubt one of the biggest things I’ve ever been involved with.
When I first started looking for an alternative to Movable Type I had two options. The first was WordPress the other was Textpattern. I chose WordPress for the community. That community however has changed. It’s core has shifted into something different. The thing is though I can’t really say that this is the community’s fault. This shift actually can be attributed to something else. The fact of the matter is that WordPress development has stagnated as far as the .org user is concerned.
The only explanation I can give is that this is because the WordPress development shifted it’s attention. Shifted from the .org section to the .com section. I’m not going to condem the guys for doing this, in fact in most cases I understand them doing this. However this move and shift hasn’t gone unnoticed and obviously a lot of energy flying about the WordPress community has either gone into the ether, ignored or shrugged aside. All these thousands of people out there that have contributed in the past feel as though they have been forsaken. That could be part of the reason why a great number of people genuinely got excited about the prospect of a new system, written from the ground up that might address questions. It’s all about the community. It’s all about the people that you interact with and that help you along your way.
What you think the latest release of ‘features’ on WordPress.org is a coincidence. It’s obvious (to me at least and this feature could have been in development for months, in which case I apologise) that this is a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that obviously has made them sit up and think about the situation. It’s not every day that several prominent developers (Robert, Owen, Michael), at the very least in the past otherwise they would not be in the credit box on wordpress.org, decide to leave and start something on their own; it’s a sign that something isn’t exactly right in the community. My absolute favourite one however is this one (I only saw this because it was lying in my referrer log), so yeah go and hammer that link and lets get it up there at the top :) lol.
Don’t be silly. Nobody is trying to kill WP. We’re not aiming to make software that is better than WordPress, we’re trying to make software that is better than ALL blogging software out there. Lets be clear about this there are quite a large number of open source projects that allow you to do essentially the same thing. Their degree of complication obviously varies, however the fact remains that there are many alternatives. As it stands it’s considered that WordPress is the best alternative that’s available on the market. So it’s obvious that people would think that we are in fact trying to create something that out does WP. Also many of us have come from a WordPress user base, however that doesn’t mean other people from other backgrounds cannot join the fun. But would we really be getting involved and doing something if we didn’t feel like there was a void to be filled? Room for one more solution that offered an alternative way of doing things? We’re ultimately here because we feel that we can contribute back and put our efforts into something that can aid people and can provide a fun platform to share their thoughts, photos and media.
We don’t even have a developer’s pre-release. The reason it was announced in any fashion was because one of the core developers moved his site over and was the first person to actively use the code for his site. That’s a MAJOR success, one that deserved to be celebrated. In a weird twist of fate, outing slightly earlier than anticipated was actually an incredible great thing. Why? Because people that were on the fringes, thinking that this was just all wishful thinking might actually hold some legs. As such this little buzz has gotten several people wanting to contribute, and here’s one reason why:
Habari is a fresh start. We’re all in the unique position that we’ve been blogging for several years now. We’ve all had our share of experiences with open source and we’ve all seen several different packages in our time. We’re at the stage now that if we had a fresh start we’d do things slightly differently and hopefully better. And that’s what we’re aiming to do.
I guess that might be the greatest draw to the Habari project. We’re pretty open for people who want to contribute to the project, in fact the way that this project has been set up, it’s ideal for people wanting to contribute as it’s got a completely different structure in it’s development, in that it’s a meritocracy. It’s a great way to make sure that the software comes first and that there is no one person who veto’s everything or has final say in everything.
So were do we go from here? Well one of the things that I shall be doing as I’m coordinating the designers on this team is to give a recap every Sunday of this week’s activities on the design front. What we finished off and what we’ve got to look forward towards. I’ll be including pics and so everyone is always welcome to chime in and add their two cents to the design either here or in the dev mailing list.
Spread the news!
Continuing in my series of the best of 2006, just finished my post on the best graphic novels of 2006 over at Splash Panel.
Well Chris broke the news about, Habari, a new open source blogging CMS platform. While he didn’t want feel it correct to mention in the post who was involved, I’m going to step forward and put my hand up as the designated pixel pushing monkey of this motley crew.
What I find amusing is that as this news was released by Chris, I read this post about how any new blogging software would not stand a chance because of WordPress. Man I love a fucking challenge. I mean reading that post you’d think we’d be fools to even consider making a WordPress alternative. I guess all I can say to that is: Colour us DAMN foolish.
Back in November Chris approached a few of us to see who would be up for helping design for the new project he was working on. His timing couldn’t have been better to be honest with you. See I had a MASSIVE itch that just needed to be scratched. I had definitely not said everything that needed to be said about blogging administration panels, especially since the last one I was actively involved with didn’t exactly go exactly the way it should have.
I felt pretty burnt the last time round to be honest, so much so that I really thought it was best for me to steer well clear of any open source involvement in the future. However like I said in that post the most important thing that I got out of the online experience was the collaboration with the guys. If it was anyone else asking me to do something apart from Michael, Joen and Chris I’d have probably declined there and then. I didn’t join the team because I didn’t have anything better to do (as it will become clear in the coming months), but alas because I really want to create something that I can be proud to have been involved with and that I will find a joy to use. Something that I can contribute towards and that others can contribute towards as well in an open fashion.
So when Chris came forward I was all too happy to say yes. Considering that I had actually contacted another developer (I’m not going to mention him by name but needless to say he was also having a similar itch which says a lot about how things stand in the current open source blogging world) about starting our own blogging CMS, it was interesting that others around me felt the need for an alternative as well.
The great thing about the Habari project is the fact that it’s a clean slate. Imagine starting on the ground floor. There were no presidencies, no set stringent codebase that couldn’t be altered, no existing userbase that might be confused and the list goes on. This is a decidedly different beast than Shuttle.
Those who don’t learn from the past end up repeating the mistakes again and again. So my approach to the graphical development of Habari is slightly different. Simply put, I’m going to be as transparent about the design process as you can imagine. I’ve seen several times in the past couple of months on the project, that through being open about the design I’ve been able to seriously move it forward in ways that I very well might not have considered. Ideas are what will make things move forward. At the same time it’s important that one person takes the bull by the horns and really goes to town on the design. Others should jump in with as many suggestions as possible, all the time because that’s how the innovation will continue and the project will not stagnate.
I will be going into a lot more detail in future posts regarding all the design decisions and what everything does and how it all fits together, so be patient, it’ll all pay off in the long run I promise. As we’ve only recently kind of decided about colours (although knowing me I will probably tweak them, but I’m trying to be very good about this and sticking with this colour scheme), posting this will give people a feel of the quality of final product we’re going for (and I’m not going to even talk about the code, the others are more than capable of that).
The following jpg is but a mockup, however Chris has implemented a fair chunk of this believe it or not (with probably like a 2 week old mock up), I’m telling you the man is a machine that will not be stopped. His dedication has forced me to make sure that I bring my very best to the table. It’s a bit of pressure that I’m actually relishing. Keeps me honest about things.
If you’ve got ideas you think the ultimate BLOGGING CMS should have drop a comment, I’d love to hear what ideas everyone has and what’s important to them as a user. What is it about your current blogging software that you wish could be simplified/improved, I’m all ears.
It’s unreal just how much faster doing this tweak actually makes Firefox load websites. Seriously best Firefox tweak I’ve done in a good long while.
Easily one of the coolest gadgets I got this year was the Blackberry Pearl (or 8100 model). I’ve been playing with it for like a day now and I know it’s going to be something really special to use for a good long while. Although it’s a nice site, the images really don’t do it much justice. It’s honestly a thing of beauty in design if you have it infront of you. It’s only slightly larger than my previous Ericsson and packs a serious punch with respect to the number of features it’s got in it.
The only annoying thing I found was the flap you put the SIM card in doesn’t stay set, but opens until you put the battery in there. Minor annoyance but it’s a real shame as this could have scored some more points of rock solid construction. Another thing that is really starting to PISS me off, is the fact that none of these phone manufacturers have clocked onto the fact that it would be nice to have a normal earphone jack as opposed to some piece of shit they’ve concocted for you to plug in your earphones.
I’ve been with Orange for the last year and a half. The best part of being with Orange wasn’t the coverage (which is shit where I live) or the price package (which was shit once again but I’ll get to that in a minute) but rather the one little perk of having 2 for 1 cinema tickets on a Wednesday. Of course, based on my previous post, I’ve not been doing that very often either, which means that this little perk, wasn’t all that much of a perk as far as I’m concerned, so I didn’t need much convincing to drop them as my network of choice.
What’s interesting is that I was able to get the phone and a whole new package that suits me down to a T while paying less. The issue with a lot of these packages that many operators provide is that they’re honestly not tailored very well for the average user. They either give you an immense amount of time in “off-peak” hours that are not always useful, so you end up not using all of them, or they give you too little minutes during normal times. The good thing however is that after a year and a bit of using my phone regularly I’ve got enough bills to know exactly how much a use and of what. No need to guess these things (as I’ve had to in the past).
Got to check how much that costs on the internet to see if it’s cheaper. In the end T-mobile based on their Flext system which effectively gives you a pot of money every month that you can use for either calls or texts all from the same pot. Obviously I’ve opted for the unlimited internet service on there which is brilliant to be surfing the web while waiting on the train platform or even walking to and from places. You know when you’re in any store and you think to yourself:
Well now it’s just a few clicks to check the net there and then.
So I’ll be talking about things/software/tips and tricks/links that I find out for the Pearl as I go along. Hopefully other people can benefit from my experiences. The first software tip I’ll throw everyone’s way is the Opera Mini browser.
Seems that Opera is definitely the little browser that could. Seems that this little browser is a hit on the Nintendo market. I’ve got to say that Opera Mini (opera for mobile devices) is MILES better than the standard BlackBerry browser. For a start they’ve cut away a lot of the clutter that the BB browser has when the menu is pressed. People on that size of screen don’t want to scroll FOREVER. We want something quick and to the point. Sure the browser is being updated pretty regularly as far as I can tell. It’s got RSS integration which is essential for all mobile devices as far as I’m concerned.
The Home page is EXACTLY what you want to see when you first log into the browser. Oh sure I’m as self obsessed as the next guy, but having BK as my home page on my BB seems a bit of a waste of space, although it’s definitely interesting to see how the site renders on a mobile phone (I’ll be sorting out a seperate mobile spreadsheet in the not too distant future).
The only annoying thing for me at the moment (which I’m not sure if it’s got something to do with the actual browser or t-mobile’s settings) but effectively every time you use Opera it asks you:
If anyone’s got a way of stopping this fekking annoying message coming up everytime Opera is used please, pretty please with a cherry on top drop something in the comments and I’ll update this post accordingly.
For those in the T-mobile camp wondering how to sort this out onto your Pearl, here’s the steps I took:
As I continue my review of 2006, go read part 1 if you want to find out my thoughts on The best of the Net 2006, I’m turning my attention to movies. Interestingly I think this year has been one of the worst years for movies in a really long time. That isn’t to say that I haven’t enjoyed a good number of movies this year, it’s just that I found less time for movies this year, which I can probably attribute to the lack of quality flicks being shown this year.
Most disappointing movie of 2006 for me personally was X-men 3. Seriously they were on auto-pilot for that movie. Another minor disappointment for me was Superman Returns. Not because it was a bad movie, but rather because it wasn’t as great as I actually really wanted it to be.
However the PRUNE of all prunes surely has to go to Rocky Balboa (and that’s considering some of the stinkers I’ve seen this year, I mean it’s got Last Holiday for fuck’s sake). I mean seriously what the hell were they thinking when they got round and signed all the contracts for this? It’s one of the most ridiculous concepts I’ve ever heard and it’s really strange that Hollywood is so lame that it has to create another sequel. They should have stopped after 2 and called it a night. Hell I might even stomach 4, but seriously Rocky 6? I haven’t even seen this and sure as hell am not going to bother wasting my time with it. What next Die Hard 4? Oh shit yeah they’re going to be making that.
I started writing a best of 2006 about a week ago, however I’ve had to break that down into several posts because it got far too large and I didn’t feel that I would be doing each topic justice, if I bulked all of them into one post. So for the first topic of conversation I’ll talk about the best of the Net for 2006. This is mainly about design on the net, internet applications, websites that caught my attention on the net for one reason or another. So without further adieu here’s the Squeaky Kode Trophies for the year of 2006.
It’s taken me a long while but I finally bit the Flickr bug as well and got myself an pro account as well. I’ve got to say that I don’t use it as much as I should do but that will be changing in the not to distant future.
For my feed reading I’ve jumped on the Newsgator bandwagon. I’ve got a lot to write about with respect to FOFRedux and will hopefully go to using that application in the not too distant future sometime next year, but in the meanwhile I’ve found the Newsgator service to be exactly what I was looking for.
So I guess it’s not so much that I had a specific internet application, but rather the fact that I actually decided to use several of the plethora of applications out there for use in the first place.
If you think I’ve missed something pretty fundamental just drop a comment and I’ll be sure to add it into the list or create a whole new category for it.
Linux equivalent project is just a list of links for programmes that do the same thing. Good one to have handy, although it didn’t really give me anything new, hopefully in time it’ll expand though as a resource.
Mandolux, easily one of the single best implementations of a good idea for wallpapers on the net. Take some nice high quality photographs, halve them so they’re abstract enough provide them as wallpapers in different sizes. Genius.
Over a month ago I was on the hunt for a laptop. In my quest for a small laptop I actually looked at the Fujitsu-Seimens model and the Sony Vaio, and hell I even looked into getting myself an ibook or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays (the cheaper kind not the medal ones). Alas none of them really floated my boat, because they were either too thick, or too heavy. I wanted something far more portable than any of those models could provide me with.
In the end I settled on a Toshiba R100. I got this particular model for a couple of reasons. The first was because I’d actually seen the model in question as all the directors in the company got these things as standard issue earlier this year. The beauty of these particular laptops are that due to the fact that they don’t have a CD player makes them incredible light and super small.
As you can imagine, the standards Windows install lasted a total of like 5 hours on my machine as I quickly found a way to install dapper drake straight away. Once I’d done that I decided that it would be a good idea to try installing beryl on there, bad idea. For all those thinking that you can get all the funky 3D effects on this machine, you can’t. The computer has a Trident graphics card, and as such this extra layer it would seem is not possible. You could try but what happened with me is that it basically screwed up Sudo for me and things were not installing and a whole slew of other rubbish came of it. So word to the wise just avoid it on this machine.
I’m writing my findings down here in the hopes of a couple of things. I can’t be the only person to have Ubuntu installed on this machine, or even the only one that wants to have Ubuntu installed on this machine, so I’ll going to chronicle my findings here and fill it up as a resource for other helpless souls that are tearing their hair out as well, and hopefully I might get some answers to some of the bugs that can be found on this machine.
The problem is that Vesa doesn’t work, and the trident driver is just not good enough. There’s a bit of a bug involved here that I don’t know what the deal is. When you log in you’ll only see a quarter of the desktop. You’ve got to CTRL-ALT-F1 to restart xorg quickly, log back in and it’s all working nicely. Fekking annoying bug if you ask me. So I reported the bug on Launchpad, and someone got back to me less than 24hours later. Still hoping for a resolution to this, but it’s great to have someone get back to me directly and so quickly to try and solve my issue.
The next problem I had was in the keyboard (in fact I still have this problem, which is a real pain in the ass to be honest. Basically, when I log in, the keyboard letters are recognised, however the rest of the keyboard, and I’m talking about the symbols buttons, come up with some utter giberish. Selecting another generic keyboard solves the problem. If anyone has got a solution to this stupid bug I’d really be grateful (once again I’ve logged a report in as well about this).
So is Edgy worth it. It’s a more polished graphically at least distribution to Dapper. The login screen isn’t as scary as Dapper. The icons have been polished and look a lot more professional to be honest. Things like he new help icon and the new login screen are all great little additions that basically make the package look more professional. The new chocolate background is also pretty cool. I am glad that they didn’t go for the community created screenshots that we previewed. I’m with Mark Shuttleworth on this particular subject. It just wasn’t right.
One thing I have noticed (and maybe that’s because the harddisc is smaller and less complicated than on my desktop machine,) but Nautalis is actually faster on this install. It’s changed ever so slightly with the latest addition of gnome.
XFCE I thought I’d try another windows manager instead of gnome. XFCE was the obvious one. I’ve got to say that while it does seem lighter, it’s definitely not as polished as gnome. There are certain things in it that really do need some work. Some pretty fundamental things. I’ll definitely have a look at it in a few months/years to come, but for the moment I think it’s got a way before it’s as solid as gnome.
Thunar One of the great additions however is Thunar, which I think is a fantastic little application, very light and gets me to where I want to be straight away. I’m using a completely different icon to be honest, mainly because I love the screen with the stars, after all I am attracted to the stars.
Abiword Another great little find is Abiword. It’s got a pretty rubbish splash screen, but it is supremely lightweight Word replacement. It looks exactly like word, only slightly more slimmed down. For the type of documentation I require however it’s absolutely brilliant. So much so that I’m thinking about making it my default word processing tool of choice on my desktop machine as well. Hopefully the same developers can have a look at making an Excel alternative as well using the same ideologies, it just works really well and has got a very clean user interface.
One of the main reasons why I’m completely quiet at the moment is mainly due to the fact that I’m working on this behmouth of a building, Los Faros De Panama. It’s by far the largest project I’ve been involved with as it 3 towers (central tower clocking in at around 84 floors) and a podium level of 6 floors. Architects are Chapman Taylor, while we’re doing everything else (structure, mechanical, electrical, public health, fire, vertical transport and the list goes on) It’s been an interesting challenge getting to grips with the American
Interesting little bit on the Panama Investor Blog as well, regarding the size of this project. It’s going to be a damn long week, I can tell you that much.
This “little” Eboy poster is so apt for capturing what I’ve been experiencing for the past year and a half as I got more into the internet in general. What’s great about the poster is that you actually notice more and more stuff on second and third viewing.
In a time when I should really be blogging MUCH more often (as I’m going through some pretty tough and generally strange times right now) is actually the time when I felt the need to stay away from my blog and the online world in general. I’ve not really been able to pinpoint the reason behind this as my website has always been something of a release for me. It’s something that I use to express what’s on my mind and purge my mind.
The harsh reality of the situation is that the weblog is often times not the perfect or ideal solution for venting and for getting things off your chest. The reasons are simple. You end up sounding like some whiny git, or you upset people in your real life that might take offence with what you’ve written. So in effect over the past couple of weeks I’ve just kept silent because of that.
As if that would be enough, it’s not. I can’t really talk about my personal life as much as I’d like to. I’m a very open person, so most (if not all) of my thoughts are written on my face, so my site should really be a reflection of that right? Wrong. I can’t really talk about soo many things that I would like to get off my chest because these words are then let out into the wild. Left into the cyber realm far away from my control. I can’t realistically hide my writing from some people. It’s like some people I’d love for them to be able to read things that I write while others I’d like to filter that sort of thing out. Or does it really matter? That’s what’s been going on in my head these past few weeks and to be honest it’s not until I actually sat down and started writing these things down did I realise what was annoying me, what was keeping me away.
In a way I guess blogging is less (to me at least) about what it was in the beginning. At first it was all about expression. You did your thing and got on with it, because NO ONE was watching us in the beginning. Nobody really cared about what these guys did in the fringes of the internet. We had a certain amount of anonymity.
I’m currently at a crossroads. This is a crossroads that will effect my online presence, as this week I was seriously considering packing in the pipe dreams of graphic novels, artwork, design, graphics and the lot and just concentrating on engineering. I know it’s fucking strange to hear and it seems as though I’ve given up after a fashion.
Then yesterday I remembered something. It’s a feeling only artists can feel. Maybe designers as well, but artists more so, because they’re doing all the lifting. It’s about the feeling of completing the piece of artwork in front of you. You start off with a blank piece of paper, with only a vision, a clear idea of what the final drawing will look like once you’ve completed it. Once you’ve laid the last bit of ink, or completed the paint and it’s dried, that feeling lasts only a little while; the problem is that engineering can NEVER replicate that feeling, no matter how much I decide to give it time and energy and effort.
So am I packing it in? Probably not just yet, but I definitely needed to have this heart to heart to get things off my chest, and I guess that’s what it’s all about.
The Prestige, the new Christopher Nolan movie is like getting Christmas early. I mean how could the following ingredients possibly disappoint. You get Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine, David Bowie all in one movie, set in turn of the century London, revolving around magicians and the ultimate magic trick.
Seeing as how becoming a magician was one of my first dreams of what I wanted to become when I was older, you can imagine how giddy I felt watching this movie. It wasn’t slightly good, it was bloody good. Watching the movie there was this sense of urgency, tricks and double tricks, twists and turns. You always were thinking how is that trick done, how do they do it, what’s the deal with it all.
Bale is awesome as he’s definitely beginning to take over as one of the premier actors you go for when you need a solid performance. Michael Caine is doing a spectacular job as always. In fact with regards to the acting (and casting for that matter), everything was completely spot on.
One of the first things you find out about the movie is why it’s called the Prestige. I’m not going to ruin it (unless you’re really into magicians, then you probably already know, I didn’t), as I wouldn’t be able to it the same justice as Michael Caine does in the first few minutes of the movie. The story centres around two rival magicians who go through life trying to achieve greatness. As you can imagine with a movie coming from the Nolan brothers we’re going to be dealing with a non-linear timeline with many twists and turns (I mean come on, what else would you expect from those that gave you Memento, one of the all-time classics of modern cinema.
Nolan has definitely routed himself as one of my favourite directors as he’s currently three for three in my book. He’s definitely taken over from David Fincher who has disappeared into the ether of late (wasn’t Panic Room the last Fincher movie?).
Abracadabra.
I got back from Greece on Sunday in a pretty mixed way. I’m glad that I didn’t have a repeat of previous experiences in airports however even though the flight was delayed by an hour it was worth it simply for the view coming into London. Sunday was the 5th of November, as ‘V’ from V from Vendetta warns us:
I’ve got to say I’ve never seen London in the same way. It was a completely clear sky, and the entire city was lit up. Down below as far as the eye could see were firework going off in every single location all around the city. It was pretty spectacular as I hadn’t really appreciated just how large this city actually is; I tend not to bother looking out into the distance as I approach. So here’s a word to the wise, if in the future, you get the opporunity to fly into London in the evening on the 5th of November, and you know it on good authority that it’s going to be a clear night sky, definitely book that ticket.
New Citroen ad - Mutation. It’s good to see that they moved their ideas forward and didn’t do another Transformer ad. The Bonobo music is absolutely brilliant. (Hat tip: Pixelsurgeon).
Blue Dragon from the fine folk at Mistwalker. Dammit, they’ve actually got me considering getting an Xbox 360 as it’s what I expected Final Fantasy 8 to look like (7 was and is the only Final Fantasy game I’ve played, but when I mean played I mean bought a Playstation just to play…(thanks to Aurum3 for the heads up, I might have to kill you guys).
It’s late. What’s definitely becoming endemic of my life in general (being late with projects), Broken Kode | Season One is roughly 8 months late. This book was meant to have been completed and at the printers end of February so that I could put it forward for the Blooker prize. Wasn’t for the prize to be honest, but so that I could at least adhere to a deadline and get the book finished. I remember pressuring Michael to sort out the introduction and then I subsequently missed the deadline (sorry Mike); who knows maybe I’ll put it forward for this year’s Blooker prize (although I seriously doubt it would stand much of a chance).
The first paper copy of the book sat on my desk (next to my mouse) for the past 6 months and hadn’t moved. It just sat there as a constant reminder to me that I had invest hundreds of hours in compiling and putting together that it wasn’t complete. I took it with me to America and completed reading it and annotating it on the plane there but couldn’t find the energy to sit down and correct everything.
If I get nothing else out of this vacation (which I actually have) I’ll know that I completed this book. I’m happy to report that the copy has been sent to Lulu and is ready to be ordered.
The standard version is in glorious black and white, however I’ve included a colour version of the book as well for myself and to see what the colour printing of Lulu is like, as I intend to compile a design and illustration book in the not too distant future (yeah I know, but thankfully that’ll only be illustrations and a little commentary here and there). For all intents and purposes that’s all the tweaking I’ll be doing. I’ve gone through the original book soo many times, I’ve still got that feeling that I’ve missed something; maybe that’s because I’m soo close to this book that I feel as though I’m never going to really finish the book and that there’s always something to do.
The original book came in at over 285 pages long. After sitting down and thinking about it, I felt that a lot of the posts really didn’t deserve a whole page dedicated to them. So part of the exercise was to cut down the number of pages. The current page count is a more manageable 195 pages.
I’ll be providing a decent page for the book and sorting out my Lulu store front as well, until then the dead tree version provides a little bang for your buck, as it’s got the following goodies:
As this is one big experiment, I’m going to write down some of my reasoning behind the layout and design of the book itself and other things I’ve learnt about the Lulu process. Hopefully these might enlighten those brave souls that are considering jumping into the book based on blog field.
So here’s a layout of the pages themselves (click on the image for an expanded view). Now I’ve decided to put one blog post on every page. This allows you enough room to actually include a number of things, including the categories, the dates and other good stuff like commentary for the actual posts themselves.
For some reason which I can’t really explain I honestly thought it was a good idea to try and include all the posts I made in the book, regardless of their quality. The reasoning behind this was that I wanted to be a completist. Fortunately the voice of reason came upon me and I think it’s important to distinguish the difference between the online world and the print world. Publishing on the online world is cheap. I can afford to have crappy posts every once in a while. In a book however you really should put your best stuff out there otherwise the book won’t get a second look. People have enough books/movies/theatre/etc vying for their attention, I don’t think putting in my incoherent rants (and some of them are seriously incoherent I’ve found) into the mix and increasing the noise in your life.
When compiling this book I was in the pretty fortunate position that I didn’t really have to wonder too much about the comments themselves as I didn’t have all that many comments in the first year of the ‘Kode’s life. I think if I do go through with making Season Two, I might include the more important comments much in the same way I’ve included only the worthy posts within the book. It’s all about what enhances the book and makes it something more enjoyable.
I guess this section came about for a couple of reasons. The first was when I started thinking for reasons why anyone would want to buy a book based on my blog where all the posts are available for reading for free. It’s not like my blog is ground breaking or anything. It’s not like it’s got essential commentary on life, the universe and everything inbetween. I guess I wanted to make it slightly more worthwhile, make it stand out from the online version of the same content.
It’s been a hell of a long journey, marred by the fact that it’s taken as long, I’ve got no one to blame really but myself. The saving grace of course is the fact that the Lulu process is pretty painless. I was able to set everything up and have it all up and running in a very short while. The site has been slightly updated throughout this year and is slightly more polished, however there still is room for improvement I think (at least from a usability point of view). What’s great is that the online help function is now working and I got a couple of questions I had answered straight away which was very satisfying.
For my latest redesign (and on the other sites and programmes I’m working on) I’ve structured the CSS file somewhat differently. Rather than having what has become CSS convention of having every element of each class, id or whatever on a separate line:
[css]h1{ padding: 0 0 35px 0; margin: 0 0 25px 0; font-size: 2.0em}[/css]
I’ve instead decided to put everything onto one line: [css]h1{ padding: 0; margin: 0 0 25px 0; font-size: 2.0em}[/css]
What does this do you ask? The single most important thing in a CSS file, it makes it manageable. It makes it easy for me to actually edit the damn thing a few months down the line, in a quick and easy way. Rather than scrolling down 500 lines of code, I’m scrolling down 150 lines. The main structure for me is done in programmes like Bluefish or CSSed, however a lot of the editing and tweaking is done within Firefox, so I need to have the easy for scrolling down quickly.
The added bonus of this method is that it reduces the size of my file at the same time. I honestly started thinking why the hell I didn’t do this earlier as it just makes oh so much more sense to condense the file.
I’ve reviewed Frank Miller’s 300 over at Splash Panel. It’s most definitely one of the few graphic novels that every red blooded male should have on their shelves.
I’ve been meaning to talk about the latest season of Battlestar Galactica since it began airing 3 weeks ago now. For all those who don’t know what I’m talking about, go here and read (which reminds me I really should go back to my old posts and format them accordingly, how embarrassing). Without a shadow of a doubt the great TV show that is currently on the air. Groundbreaking in many ways and essentially just a damn good story.
Matt beat me to the punch with his review on the latest Battlestar Galactica episode (season 3, episode 4) Exodus Part 2, but it most definitely was a complete rocket (no pun intended). As of right now I’m going to get into details so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE with a cherry on top, go somewhere else because I’m going to be throwing SPOILERS. You’ve been warned.
So what did I like about this episode? So many great moments to think about. I absolutely loved the scene with the Galactica jumping into the atmosphere and launching the Raptors; classic scene, the flames the idea itself and a flawless execution.
Gaeta is a great little character. If there was one person that I think would be me on that show it would be Gaeta, except I would have definitely pulled that god damn trigger. In any case I’m still holding that Baltar is a fraking Cylon, based on the completely dodgy way in which he escaped his ‘death’ in the pilot. Everything blows up and he’s hiding behind Number 6’s skinny (and incredibly lovely legs). Bollocks the man is a Cylon.
The scenes with Tigh and Ellen were brilliant. I think Saul is a complete fuck up however he’s been put in a pretty bad position time and time again. Most people would have cracked under the pressure. He kind of has, however at the same time he keeps fighting, even though he probably wishes he would die. Listening to Ellen give her final goodbye was just great. Here you had a woman that obviously would do anything for you, and has had to. This is war and in war you do ugly, terrible things, in order to survive. I don’t think Ellen was evil, more like completely stupid and misguided, but she loved her husband, after a fashion.
The Pegasus coming to the rescue was completely predictable and I was wondering when they were going to get rid of that ship. There can be only one Battlestar, although Bill’s now back to being a Commander rather than an Admiral, which is a shame, I really liked that growth of character.
Speaking of growth in character, that is actually one of the most important aspects of this little jump the writers have put into this particular season. All these character are now even more fucked up and damaged than what they were before the invasion. Now the inter-relationship politics are even more intense, however we have no idea what caused this rift. What happened in that one year. I guess we can expect to find many of these questions answered in the coming weeks. I’m going to try and do this analysis on a regular basis.
Also for some reason, listening to the podcasts, while I do like the fact that the team is actually doing these, some of the magic is actually taken away from the show by them talking about their practical consideration, room and the cost of an episode. I dunno, I guess the show really does suspend my disbelief that I don’t want anything to bring it back.
Standards Reboot. In a way it was inevitable, following these pretty shocking results. Seems we do actually have a way to go before the majority of sites are standards compliant.
The transformers trailer actually looks pretty damn good. This might be pretty old news but I hadn’t heard anything about it on the net.
I’m currently in Greece for a full 2 weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this break for well over a month now, hell I’ve been looking forward to this break for at least 3 months. I didn’t go anywhere during the summer period, which was probably the worst thing to do for my psyche to be honest. The summer was a very dark time for me with very little bright spots which was clearly reflected in my mood and how I dealt with those around me. Being a traditionally pretty patient person, I noticed myself getting more irate with things and situations that I would normally brush off, or at least see the funny side. Hasn’t been the case for at least 3 months now.
I guess I can attribute this to the situation in Lebanon which seriously hit me very hard. I can probably attribute it to work which has been very far from enjoyable these last few months, or I can attribute it to unfinished business from several areas that kept me down (my list of unfinished projects is pretty extensive). Needless to say, I need a break and a break I shall have. However I’m never happy until I’ve got things off my plate and I’ve been very good at not putting anything new on my plate but actually finishing those projects that I had opened/started/committed to first, after all I’m a finisher, not just an instigator.
Since it’s good to have a list I think I’ll make this list to remind myself what I have to look forward to in getting these monkeys off my back:
The site is nearly a year old now, and I’m still using Fauna, which has done the site proud but I’ve got a lot more in store for this site. The break in Greece is going to do wonders to the amount of writing I get done for the site. This time round however I’m going to be sure to stock up on the reviews and release them at a slower but regular pace. Expect a lot of European comics and some more indie revies (as that’s the majority of comics I have in Greece).
The other two websites that I have promised and have actually done most of the work on (ie all the artwork is complete) it’s just a matter of coding the damn things. These will be done once I get back from Greece, although I might get the urge and sort them out while I’m in Greece, who knows I’ve got two weeks to fill in.
Book’s been done, edited by hand and just needs those tweaks to be put into the file and thrown out to lulu. This is probably 1 day’s work or something like that so I think I might be doing something about this in the not too distant future. Just get another thing that I said I’d do off my plate.
This is an interesting one. For a while now I’ve been asked if people can buy prints with my artwork. It’s been in the back of my mind and I did it once, but to be honest it was a great deal of hassle and not enough benefit. So I might go away from the DIY route and use a service like Zazzle or something similar. If any one’s got any recommendations that can cater for Europe at reasonable prices I’m all ears.
I talked about this ages ago. Obviously life got in my way and I wasn’t really able to go forward with this one. It’s a very simple idea, which I’m going to elaborate on in a massive post in the coming days. Once I’ve done the design I’ll contact the souls that answered my call the last time. Don’t want to be wasting anyones time. Needless to say that the current Broken Kode redesign and believe it or not Crazyegg have both enabled me to have a clearer view as to what works and what doesn’t in the design of a site (once again more on this at a later stage down the road).
Also on a completely different note, I really need to get myself a laptop (any recommendations for small dinky laptops, like the Fujitsu Lifebook or a Vaio would be welcome) as I’m currently using my dad’s windows install using an ADSL connection that might be a little difficult to sort out on Ubuntu and it’s seriously painful to get anything done (which isn’t helped by the fact that it’s a shitty CRT screen that’s got a tinge of purple going through,…nice), the ‘Kode has never looked this bad.
Check out the new Sony Bravia Paint Advert. I’ve got to say that these adverts are taking over the same status as the Levis ads of the mid 90s. You know the ones that would propel music artists into the limelight and just make little contributions to pop culture. Even more flamboyant than the bouncy balls.
In constructing a building the foundations are the first things that go in. Much in that vein, I’ve decided to approach (and name), every iteration of Broken Kode after the construction of a building. These are then followed on by the superstructure (the stuff that sits above the ground level), and once everything is there, the cladding and services (ventilation, electricity, water) come in.
Back in May when I updated the site, I called it Foundations. I eluded at the time that the reasons behind this name was because I was effectively taking a step back and start taking things in a simple manner. Build the site up at my own pace. No real rush in getting anywhere, just proper steps into crafting a site that I would be happy with. In order to do that I had to make sure that the foundations (see, there was a reason for that name) I lay were rock solid, thus making my life in updating the site less of a chore that it traditionally is.
Inspiration is a funny thing, in that you don’t know when and where it’s going to come down. Arguably the worst period for me in the past year was when this itch decided it had to be scratched. I actually started the mockups on this site before I even switched over to Ubuntu, as I had begun the mockup design in Photoshop. When I moved over to Ubuntu, I started using Inkscape as my first method of tackling layout and design for websites and have found it an utter joy to use.
The biggest difference is the structural layout of the page. You’ll notice I’ve tried to steer away from a traditional blog look. I’ve done it far to many times, I’ve tried a couple of other iterations and while it’s been good, I think my writing style and how I have chosen to use this site and how I write has taken a shift and the site design should really reflect this accordingly. I’m traditionally a verbose person and therefore my posts and even my asides at times can be very lengthy.
The first and most significant change that can be seen in this design is the rigid grid layout that I’ve adopted. Effectively the only page that’s had a proper makeover is the index page. The post page also got a very slight change (but that was implementing ideas that I had for the previous incarnation of the site but was too lazy to get on and implement it all).
One of the many criticisms I get from friends regarding the old incarnations of the site is the fact that there is far too much text on the page. Not enough explanation. I guess the designs really didn’t provide all the information required. I can definitely vouch for the fact that a lot of what I’ve done/have been involved with is hidden under the wayside and I felt it was pretty important to get those elements on the page and shown in a proper light. It’s been very varied, but I will say that a great deal of inspiration was derived from the Guardian newspaper I have been reading this newspaper on and off since it got it’s face lift earlier this year. It’s got a crisp clean design which is what I was intending to get in there as well.
The site is slightly borked in IE. All I can say is IE and IE users can suck on my fat hairy toe. I mean seriously people, if you’re still using that piece of shit, stop it. You’re doing yourself a massive disservice and giving me enough grief to have to deal with and try and the blasted thing make play nice (and obviously I’ll have to think about the rubbish that IE7 will no doubt be spewing out). Grumble grumble grumble.
Seriously IE is a lame animal, and the quicker someone puts it out of it’s misery the better we’ll all be. It’s the only humane thing to do to be honest. It’s a waste of my time (of which I don’t have all that much at the moment to give to clean it up).
The site looks manageable after a fashion and I’ll be sure to clean it up to pick up the minor elements that are still showing up. I do need to sort out the additional pages (as I only really concentrated on the main pages) but that’ll no doubt get sorted out once the dust settles in the next couple of weeks.
So what’s next you ask? I’ve got another 3 website that I’ll be sorting out over the next month or so, and then I’m taking a complete step AWAY from web designing, for anyone, in any capacity. I will finish off my obligations however once that’s done you won’t even be able to afford my services in that department, because they won’t be for sale. I’m going to be concentrating on my artwork fully and my writing. I think it’s time I buckled down and did what I first set out to do with this site.
Timely “Ipod killers” article, flags up several players that I definitely want to have a look at, specifically the MPIO FY800 looks like a real contender
Flickr Cards. What makes this strange is that I only sorted out my flickr account yesterday (yeah I’ve been resisting this for a while now). I love print as well.
Democrcy Internet TV Platform - in all it’s open sourcy goodness. Just in time for the new Battlestar Galactica series (how the hell did so many months go by since season 2 ended, it really does seem like an eternity), the new My Name is Earl series and the new Lost series (still need to finish watching the rest of Season 2).
Breathing Earth is one of the scariest things I’ve seen in a good long while. Prepping myself up for watching ‘An inconvenient Truth’.
Following on from Part 1 of this series of posts on Ubuntu, I’m going to talk about Ubuntu and Linux’s most POWERFUL concept. Installing software through repositories. The way I understand it is that these are databases of all the latest stable software that has been tried and tested to work with Ubuntu. The software goes through several checks and something called REVU, comments are passed back and forth regarding how to make the package better before it’s committed to the repository. This means several things to the end user, however I’m going to concentrate on two:
In the past when I would want to do something with my computer, I’d search the Internet for some software that would allow me to do something. Traditionally there were the proprietary applications and then there was the less capable but free applications available. Every once in a while you’d stumble on some open source software that would really excel itself. Needless to say I used to spend a lot of time searching the net for applications that might fit the bill of what it was I was looking for. Ubuntu takes care of the searching for me, through the Synaptic Package Manager (pictured below). (For those newbies looking for this, just go to System > administration > Synaptic Package Manager)
You can search for applications either by category, or if you know what it’s called by name. So if you want some software that burns DVDs, or a bit torrent client then search through key words. You’d be surprised just how many applications are out there that can do all sorts of things you’d be finding if not difficult, at the very least expensive and worse frustrating on a windows machine. This little application and thought process IMHO should be the impetus of all Linux discussions. We’re dealing with THOUSANDS of developers all over the world contributing to thousands of programmes to help make YOUR (and my) computing experience easier and more enjoyable to undertake.
The issue of course is that you might need to add more repositories in order to get the very latest software which might not be verified from the Ubuntu team. This is the beauty of open source. It’s not like traditional proprietary software. There really is no need for open source to make massive leaps and bounds in one go (the traditional method employed by software houses to make you buy the upgrade), things are enhanced and augmented with time, step by step. You can even build your own repository list.
Easyubuntu should be a link on the Ubuntu desktop once you’ve installed the full thing. Why? Because it’s got all the software that isn’t covered by the GPL license that Ubuntu can’t ship with or whatever the legalities of the whole thing actually is (they could go down the Novell route and offer it as an option in the install stage, which would save a lot of people a lot of time, agro and hassle). Here’s a list of all the software that can be installed from running this little collection of applications. So all your drivers, Flash 7 (Adobe hasn’t released 8 for Linux, however they’re committed to 9 apparently), Java and the list goes on.
I’ve only used Automatix for a couple of things, however the list of software that it will install is very impressive. It’s not as polished an interface as Synaptic to be honest as it does all sorts of ugly things (to someone who’s used to the standard Ubuntu dialogue boxes) but that shouldn’t stop you from using the application itself. I’ve heard rumblings within the Ubuntu Community where some people have expressed not liking using this system. I’m not sure why not to be honest (as in I genuinely don’t have a clue so any thoughts would be appreciated).
Generally speaking, due in part to the architecture, and the other being that it is the most used Distro, most software runs on Ubuntu, it’s just sometimes a hassle, if in case it’s not found in the above methods. In that case then you’ve got a couple of options. .deb files (since Ubuntu is a Debian fork) has got these packages which act effectively like .exe files. Double click and install away. There are also others who have done autopackagers as well. Again these act like .exe files, so you double click and install. I’m going to admit I’ve tried to actually install software from the source code, however EVERY time I’ve tried, I’ve failed, and I’ve gone back and tried to find an alternative solution from the above. However if you are thinking about doing this here’s a couple of good links to refer to:
So there you have it, methods of how to install applications on Ubuntu, there’s more one way to skin a cat and in many ways a lot simpler and more open than windows in that there is generally an open source application for everything. Some are more mature than others and that’s what I’ll be talking about in the next posts on the subject. The next topic I tackle will be about applications that provide sound.
Usually people give their conclusions once they’ve established the question first and then gone through the process of explaining and proving why. I’m going to make my conclusions and therefore raise your expectations (or utter disbelief or even contempt and arrogance) and try and win you back.
To discard some initial thoughts, first off, do I think Ubuntu is perfect? Hardly. In fact a lot of it is out of my comfort zone to be honest, however I am COMPLETELY willing to jump in with both feet to try and swim. The real reason is because it’s seriously opened up the sheer amount of possibilities to me and I honestly do feel completely free with my operating system. Free as in freedom. I’m no longer constrained in so many ways that I was before and I have no doubt many other users will feel the exact same way as well.
Part of that reason is the library of open source software and ideas that are constantly being moved forward by people around the world. It’s an incredibly powerful concept that won’t become completely normal practice and accepted around the world for a few more years to come. The mainstream still fears open source. Still has doubts as to it’s power, it’s reasoning, after all we all live in a Capitalist world, where nothing is done for free, right? Wrong. Hopefully in the list of programmes that I will cover throughout this series of posts it’ll become clear that there is more ways to skin a cat. There is not one but several programmes that will enable you to do your job. The greatest part of it all, is that they are constantly being updated. I honestly can’t count how many times I’ve updated my system since I installed Ubuntu. I’ve set my timer for once a week for it to check on new updates to keep all my system fresh and up to date.
So before I made the jump to Ubuntu, I speculated as to which programmes I would be using the most to get on with the business of design and development. Some of those options have actually panned out while others haven’t really been as predicted. Within this series of posts I am intending on dispelling a lot of these thoughts that are predominant in the world at large today. In addition to that I will be reviewing and talking about software applications that I am using at the moment. Hopefully it’ll be useful to others around there to learn about software applications that are readily available for download and use. I’ll start with the nice and simple applications, that being the Internet and email client.
Well I wouldn’t have moved anywhere if I couldn’t take the little browser that could. I’m too attached to it and it’s far too cool an application to not have on your system. In fact it should be the standard browser on the system. Good thing it kind of is on Ubuntu. It doesn’t have the Firefox logo (and getting them is a bit of a pain in the ass) but it does seem as though Mozilla are going to get their way one way or another.
Never tried this little programme while on Windowz. It’s pretty cool as it looks SHAMELESSLY like Outlook, in just about every way. It’s got a couple of weird things going on in it, and it doesn’t seem to have the same flexibility in terms of plugins that Thunderbird seems to have which is a shame, but still it’s a pretty solid little email application. The nice thing is that it imports all of my contacts from Gaim, so all my online contacts are there for me to use for emails as well. THe contacts area does need some help, however it’s nice to see that this particular application is getting some more love come the latest Ubuntu release.
Come back next time as I review some graphical applications, music, video and cataloguing applications.
I’ve been trying to find ways to increase my productivity and effectively take my life back by the horns, which for the past couple of months has spiralled out of control.
Gmail is a staple in my life. I use it and don’t think about it. I’ve not gotten to the stage where I really use the folders as I can, however that might be about to change. So I’ve been looking into other online solutions that might be able to reach that status. Traditionally I’ve tried my very best to shy away from online services except those that are backed by one of the major players, mainly because they’re not going to be charging me cash to provide a task that while isn’t necessary to have online is nice to have. You could say it’s a bit of an antithesis to Web 2.0, and in a way it actually is. You’d also expect someone like me to jump for this sort of thing, however I don’t move into this arena without a little bit of caution, simply because I don’t like to be dependant on others that can pull the plug on me at any time or worse, decide to change the terms and conditions.
For all those in the dark earlier this year I help redesign the excellent open source RSS aggregator Feed On Feeds Redux. I’m still completely commited to the project, however I’ve been extremely busy of late to be able to do anything else apart from work (I will be posting the fruits of that labour in the not too distant future), so the CSS is still in a bit of a mess at the moment, which is my fault to solve. In the meantime back to news aggregators, FOFR is not really ready yet. It’s a bit on the slow side; the team is working on it but I need to take my life back now (once it’s ready I’ll probably move everything over to FOFR). I don’t know why not many people have been talking about this particular service because I seriously rate it a great deal. It’s completely free, clean interface, and actually believe it or not operate in the same way (more or less) as FOFR. You can import and export your feeds, you can move feeds into folders (and read all the feeds individually or within that particular folder), it’s fast, the subscribe to bookmarklet works a charm, the favicons pop up (and can be turned off if you don’t want them). Elements can be saved (or flagged depending on how you would like to term it). The only option that is missing as far as I’m concerned to be honest is the addition of tagging. I dunno if I could be bothered to tag things to be honest since I’ve only really gotten into tagging on my blog. Ben has recently mentioned Newshutch, which I’ll definitely check out, although I have the feeling that Newgator is still far better. If only they could sort something out for linux, that would be well appreciated.
I’ve been using this for a little while. I love the colours, I love the design of the site, I love the bookmarklet. Again I’ve not been using it for all that long, however I am getting into the habit of using it whenever I come to a website that I really like however I don’t want to clutter up my firefox bookmarks, because it’s get far too much. I haven’t used de.lic.ious (or where ever the bloody i’s go to be honest), because it looked far too basic for me. Too much text not enough form and structure to it all. Then again I’ve not visited the site in a good long while. Yup still a bit sparse for my liking.
I’ve only started using this today and I think it’s great. It’s got one single KILLER feature as far as I’m concerned. That is the fact that Google will text message me with the latest element on my calander of things to do. I can choose how far before it text messages me, however I seriously think that this is one of those features that is a complete godsend to someone like me. I’ve got far too much on my brain to be honest to worry about a number of things and will forget appointments, or worse (as is becoming a bit of a problem) double book things, or in the case of a couple of weeks back, triple books something. Yeah it got a bit ridiculous. This is part of the reason I’m chopping at the bits to get a PDA or the new Sony M600i.
I think I’m becoming a life hacker, hopefully the next couple of weeks will see a bit of this hectic lifestyle that I’ve been living cool down a little bit and I can actually get back to finishing off some of these projects that have been on my plate for months, some even a year.
I’d just like to extend my wishes to all those about to fast (and those who are like me already done it for a day). This is without a doubt the hardest Ramadan I’ve ever had to go through, simply because it’s been a pretty hard year, which has drained me mentally and emotionally from a number of sides. It would have been very easy for me to not fast this year. I wouldn’t blame myself. However the month of Ramadan is extremely important for me. In many respects it’s one of the few months of the year that I get time to remember and appreciate. I remember the good times with my family and I remember the sense of being alone, however with my parents and brother. There was no community for us to participate in this particular month. The month of fasting was one of solitude, that effectively brought us far closer together. The phone would not be answered and we’d always use the dining table rather than the kitchen table (it looked better and could hold more things comfortably.
It’s a time to be appreciative of the goodness that’s in front you. It’s a time to reflect on the year that is rearing it’s ugly head. See it’s a scientific fact that everything moves a lot slower when you’re fasting. You move slower (that’s probably because of low sugar levels), however I can swear that me fasting has a definite effect on time itself, I’m sure of it).
I might start posting thoughts on food as the month goes by. A couple of recipes and maybe even some thoughts about types of foody goodness. Ramadan Kareem.
Seems like the pay for model didn’t work? Can’t really say why the guys over at 21 Degrees have gone the route of giving Symphony away, but having done this blogging thing for a while, I can’t help but remember distinctly the outrage the blogosphere went through when Six Apart went and made the free Moveable Type into a pay for model. This is interesting in that it’s really going in the completely opposite direction. First come out with a pay for model, then give it away. The cynical side of me thinks that this means they’re trying to get people to jump on the Symphony bandwagon and then slap the price tag back on it once people have developed and spread the word about it, and therefore made a connection with it and invested their time into the product because it’s ‘free’.
Don’t get me wrong I think it’s great to give it away (because it really is a beautiful system), however I couldn’t find anywhere on their site the license information about the terms and conditions to downloading and using Symphony 21, and more importantly why and where they think they’re going with this free model. What can I say, the guys are fighting a hard battle and if they want to win the blogger market, they’ve got to be transparent themselves, they’ve got to blog about their system themselves. They’ve got to keep their users informed.
You have to download an installer which is directly linked to your Symphony account (is this a legacy thing from when it wasn’t free?) and then have to go through the motions. I’m quietly wary about where this is all going to be honest with you, simply because we’ve kind of been down this road before and I decided that I wasn’t going to be putting my eggs in one basket that wasn’t open source so I wouldn’t be rammed again.
Fascinating week we’ve been having with regards to international news. It’s gotten to the stage that an online reading I do is just not good enough. The absolute gem item I read today was the comments made by President Hugo Chavez of Venzuela (if anyone has a better link, without the crappy adverts in the begin that would be much appreciated.
Of course refering to George W Bushwaker.
California sues car manufacturers? Is this some kind of joke? Easily the single most ridiculous thing I’ve read all day (and the day hasn’t really begun for me). state attorney-general Bill Lockyer, has this little nugget to say (amongst other things):
It’s not the car manufacturers that you’ve got to take to task. It’s yourselves. The car manufacturers did not build the California infrastructure. The highways/freeways on top of freeways. It’s the mentality of the people living there, what they’ve become used to and what you as the state the governs these things have failed to address. This is like the kid the spilt the milk pointing at anyone (and everyone else) to lay the blame.
Finally my wishes for a mobile that actually provides me with what I want have been answer with the latest Sony Ericsson M600i.
I honestly don’t care that it doesn’t have a camera, as I find that feature a bit superfluous for my liking in a mobile phone anyway. It’s also fantastic news that mobile phone manufacturers are starting to utilise touch screens a little bit more, thus reducing the overall number of buttons on the phones, simplifying the design completely. Even better than a Crackberry.
In my mind this is exactly what I was trying to get last year. A phone that lets me:
On a similar but unrelated note, by the very nature of contracts in the UK, I end up getting new handsets every year; while this is a great thing, it’s also a terrible waste, as I’m massing a collection of handsets. All of them work, but they’re different generations. Randing from a battered Ericsson (when Sony hadn’t merged) to an oldie Nokia, the LG chocolate phone and my Sony Ericsson K750i. Definitely make a nice collection of how quickly technology for mobile devices has ramped up in a small space of time, but what the hell am I supposed to do with all these handsets? It’s not like they’re vintage yet so I can sell them on ebay as a collector’s item, and it seems like an awful waste chucking them in the bin. I mean where do ipod mini’s go when they retire? I ask because I’m eying up either a Zune or one of the new ipods.
Gnome Files. Part of the problem with open source is the fact that there are so many applications out there that can help you do all sorts of things, so much so you probably don’t even know that they exist. To help you along the way we’ve got the excellent Gnome Files website, which is basically a software information repository. Anyone have any other similar sites?
There seems to be a bit of resurgence in the design and web development UK market. This is a very good thing as it’s been pretty poor the last year or so. When I cleaned up my room a couple of weeks ago I kept looking at my old magazines like I do and there seriously is a great deal of inspiration to still be gleamed from them. For web development I highly recommend .net. The magazine had a makeover a couple of months ago (including their website, which has a lot of great stuff on there) and has a great deal of good people working for them.
Unfortunately for the more artwork/design inclined, the available mags out there are slightly more hit and miss. While I do love the class that emanates from Digit, it does lack a certain amount of fun in their features. It seems less made to showcase designers and their work, and more inclined to actually provide information on what’s going on. Now that Computer Arts has gotten rid of the previous editor-in-chief and promoted Paul Newman into that position the magazine is definitely more readable. The problem is that they still continue to make the majority of the magazine tutorial heavy. Yeah guys move on already. There is a lot more to talk about than how to use photoshop and illustrator to do stuff. You might think I’m just jaded because I don’t use either, however the fact remains that rather than providing tutorials about design and how to development your skills, and more interviews with design firms and creatives, it’s all about filters and put this layer here etc, which in my mind is a complete and utter waste of space that could be used for something more useful.
As a sidenote, the recent Jason Arber (a man whom I have a lot of respect for) article on typography and fonts was completely wrong, which I have no doubt is going to spawn some serious amounts of letters being sent to CA. Basically (and I’m completely paraphrasing, except where I’m going to be quoting the man), he said that he doesn’t understand why there is a need for font designers anymore. We’ve got enough fonts, and here’s the kicker, which is I guess meant tongue in cheek, but he still said it:
Oh, dear, he didn’t just say that did he? As if that wasn’t bad he then gives the following as well:
Oh dear again. You might as well call all those writers and tell them we’ve got enough books in this world, all the directors we’ve got enough movies in this world, all the musicians that we’ve got enough music in this world and to all artists that we’ve got enough art in this world. This is what is known in the industry as letterbait (read it in the recent Wired). This has got letterbait written all over it.
We definitely need better font management systems (I’ve been using Character map for Gnome and absolutely loving it), but saying we don’t need any more fonts and then insulting the font designers is just plain wrong.
When it comes to doing things in WordPress, any idea I come up with has usually been implemented several times over, however I think (and I really hope someone has actually done this and I simply can’t find it) but the idea for this plugin came about after talking with several of my friends who ‘read’ the site. A number of them have actually complained that whenever they come to my site, they don’t understand what the hell it is I’m talking about. For example I’d say half of them are completely lost by mentioning WordPress.
Basically it’s a very simple idea, which makes me wonder that I can’t possibly be the first to voice my thoughts about it, and to be honest I can’t see the reason why it can’t be implemented by persons more talented at this than I am. Basically the idea is that you let the user take control of what he views or subscribes from your site. So the person comes to your site goes to a “user preference section” where they choose which categories they would like to subscribe to and then the front page shows posts only from those particular categories (latest being shown on top of course).
That way the user takes control of what they want to read.
In a similar fashion I know that WordPress allows you to subscribe to specific categories, but honestly I’m definitely not going to sit there and subscribe to the same site 15 times. It’s stupid. I’ve got like over 200 feeds I’ve subscribed to, that is most definitely not an option. The problem of course is that I don’t get the read all those 200 feeds as regularly as I would like to. In fact I don’t get to read them that often lately, which is why I’ve been so behind the times lately. The other problem is the fact that there is a lot of noise in them feeds that I have subscribed to. The issue is most definitely not in the actual feeds themselves, but if I could subscribe to 200 feeds and specify which topics actually interest me from this particular site then I think it would definitely make my reading experience much more concentrated and less noisy.
It’s all about making sure the type of information you are interested in gets delivered to you in the correct way. It’s an extension of the RSS feed. It’s no longer acceptable to just provide me with an RSS feed. I want to choose the categories I’d like to hear from you, or allow you to choose what you view when you visit my site. That way you’re guaranteed to read things that actually are of some interest to you.
Anyone up for writing a plugin for me? I’ll send you white chocolate.
It’s been one of the longest summers that I can remember, which definitely followed one of the longest winter’s I can remember in a really long time. As I looked around me I saw more and more of my blogging friends slowly start to blog less. It’s not that we have less to talk about it’s just that blogging is bloody hard work. Oftentimes I do feel as though running Broken Kode is a full time job.
The past month has definitely felt the pangs of blogger burn. I’ve got less energy to blog about things that I feel passionate about. For some reason I seemed to have lost a bit of the way regarding what it is that made me blog in the first place. I started blogging to get all the floating ideas and thoughts in my head, out of there to free the clutter. It’s my therapy. Sadly I’ve not been using it as much as I wanted to, which can be attributed to a number of reasons.
So hopefully with these few elements getting crossed off my list I should be back to blogging with a vengeance in the near future. July and August accounted for the single worst months for blogging since I started blogging in January 2004, hopefully I can pull the rest of this god forsaken year from the doldrums and finish it off with a bit of a bang, after all I am a natural born optimist.
Which brings me to my latest initiative, ‘Sorting Myself Out’. This is a new initiative which I’ve started because it’s September. I love September. It’s the start of the new school year. The temperature is cooler and London is more pleasant. As with all things, it’s best to start at that which is closest. So the first element that got sorted was my room. I’ve been meaning to do some spring cleaning since May; I only got round to it last week. I spent 6 hours going through every single book and piece of paper in the room to make sure I archived what I needed and got rid of what I didn’t need. I still have to sort out my bookshelves, followed by a serious revamp of my wardrobe and then I’m going to sort out my computer and all my files.
Another element of my life that I have seriously neglected were my expenses. It’s not that I’m short of cash or anything, it’s just that I’ve really not been making my money work for me in the right way. I hadn’t sorted out my expenses for the past year or so and the list goes on. It’s another fantastic thing to have ticked off the list of things to do, which allows me to continue doing things that I really actually enjoy doing.
Once I’ve removed the clutter in my life I should be able to reclaim my life back and sort myself out.
Mapmyrun, one of the best use of the Google Maps API, I’ve seen so far on the net. My estimate of 5km for my runs wasn’t that far off, I run 4.8km.
Knot2, second alpha release of the upcoming Ubuntu release this October, Edgy Eft. This is what I love about Ubuntu, crystal clear information about what’s going in, how and why things are changing and getting better, every 6 months (give or take a couple, I know). It’s a definite breathe of fresh air compared to other operating systems.
“Bitch I’ll pull out all your blonde extensions from their big black roots”. That’s what I heard when I saw Stathis on Saturday as he was watching You Tube videos. Seems that several people have been forming a YouTube community, essentially creating video blogs. I saw a clip a couple of months ago with the infamous ‘Cowboy’ and didn’t really think much of the format to be honest. For some strange reason I found myself watching Loca though. What makes this girl (from New York, I take it by the accent?) slightly more interesting is the format she’s gone for in presenting her videoblog. Black and white video, no cutting, complete close up on the face, keep eye contact, use the camera space as much as you can. From an idea and execution pov I think it works; not terribly sure about the actual content itself, some things I found pretty amusing. It seems she’s a pretty popular girl, as her video blog has spawned imitators and parodies all for good measure.
Quick thoughts on the new online service provided by Crazy Egg. I’ve been using it for about a week now. It’s another way of looking at how users interact with your site. I use Mint for my stats package; Crazyegg provides three levels of visualisation of where the majority of visitors click on your site. It’s got a great ‘killer’ feature in the heatmaps, however it definitely falls in the nice to have category, and at $19/month, it’s definitely not that nice to have. See I would actually pay money for Akismet, because it provides me with what I see as an essential service, one that would drive me insane if I didn’t have it implemented, Crazyegg doesn’t.
Why can’t people who have a killer idea and have done their jobs correctly, pay some more attention to the pricing. I do believe that it’s got some great features and it looks great, but ultimately I feel it might suffer the same problems as Feedlounge did, overestimating what the majority userbase will fork cash for.
I definitely noticed spamming coming through, which left me scratching my head (50 in like a few hours). I guess those spammers are seriously getting their ass kicked by Akismet, easily the only ESSENTIAL plugin you want to have as a blogger of any description. Damn, was it really that bad before this plugin? The answer I guess, it was worse, because there was no solution.
Last year when Adobe bought out Macromedia, one of the main things I complained about was what would happen to my Freehand. Well we all know what’s happening, it’s a dead duck (no news about it, and no updates since the acquisition). They’re going to continue developing the supremely bloated Illustrator. You know the one I’m talking about, it takes 7 days to load once you’ve clicked the icon, and has features on top of features, most of which are completely useless to man and beast, with the hope that you can justify buying the latest version. If you hadn’t guessed it I’m not a big fan of Illustrator, I’ve always been a Freehand guy, so obviously I’m nice and bitter about the whole situation.
So before I switched over to Ubuntu, I was looking for an alternative. I thought it would have been Xara Xtreme, was about to buy the license for it, and then I realised that it was actually open sourced on Linux. Fuel to fire, I was sick of Windows to be honest, so I jumped into the deep end. What’s great about this little programme is that they’re just porting the Windows version over to Linux. At this present time, my understanding is that they’re not trying to add any new features (these I’m sure will come in the future); the progress has been very encouraging. As far as I can tell the guys and gals over at Xtreme are effectively producing a 0.1 update every month, so we should have the full version by the end of the year, if not earlier. It’s pretty usable right now, although it doesn’t export to SVG at the moment (it tries but it fails every time I try), however I’m sure that will come in the next version. While Xara was sorting itself out, another vector programme came out with a very good update.
Inkscape was a fork of Sodipodi. I do remember playing around with that programme a while back and thinking it’s got potential, but not for me. Thankfully the Inkscape crowd took it over and have been slowly but surely enhancing this programme. Things that I would like sorted out on Inkscape:
Apart from these little things, I’m extremely happy with Inkscape and it’s really encouraging that there are loads of new features that the dev team are already trying to implement into the later version. This includes a history panel (which is great) and a few other additions (hopefully the above points will be addressed as well).
I’ve got to say that I’m seriously not a fan of the KDE environment. Mainly because I think it’s seriously over the top, and I just love the simplicity of the Gnome environment. Having said that I know there are a ton of KDE specific programmes, but I’m not sure if any of them offer anything further than the above two applications. Anyone have any applications I should be trying out?
I’ve been playing around with the Gimp a bit more. Yes I know, I’ve got a massive post about this and other Ubuntu goodness. To make things slightly nicer on myself I’ve downloaded this little theme that integrates the new Tango icons from the upcoming (and has been upcoming since October of last year) version 2.4 of Gimp. Anyone got any news about when this is going to be released? I downloaded the unstable version and I see the crappy text dialogue function is still missing a text wrapper (which is pretty essential).
The last week has seen some movement on a couple of the open source projects I’ve been involved with in the past couple of years. I’ve already spoken about the first one but now I’m going to talk about the other project that I had such high hopes for which have been washed away and effectively thrown back into the faces of those that actually devoted their time into producing the goods, I am of course talking about Shuttle.
For those in the dark I’ll give a brief history of the WordPress Shuttle project. The idea first came to me after I had just finished my work on the Manji theme. I had so much fun collaborating with people online and producing something that could be used by other people (and thus giving back to the software that runs my site), that I really wanted to get back into the game straight away. I talked to Joshua and the Chris, both of whom I have the greatest amount of respect for, both of which were completely up for the project. By sheer luck Michael was having thoughts about this of his own as well. He was more than happy to join the team and in doing so brought Matt’s (Lead WordPress developer and Automattic head honcho) attention. The endeavour was now considered more than just hot air. In a very shrewd move Michael brought in Joen and thus the initial Shuttle team began work. Because a picture paints a thousand words, this is the screen shot of what we had to work with when we first started:
If you’re interested to see more, you can have a look at a Carthik’s screenshots for WordPress version 1.5.
We started work in earnest and the emails began flying between us. We were talking about everything and anything that came to our minds. We did research of all the existing blogging software tools (and the time those that hadn’t been released yet). We talked about usability, advanced users, novice users how things should work, how things should not work, what areas we should concentrate on. Seeing as we’re all bloggers we decided to give the call out to people to find out what they thought as well:
My initial thinking was heading towards something completely radical to what we had. Just strip the walls down and start implementing things in a completely different way. I don’t know if I can find the very initial mockups I started flirting with but you can check out the image set to show a lot of the initial design development. This is where working in a team is paramount. I remember Joen distinctly pointing out that the fundamental structure of WordPress was fine and that we shouldn’t be rocking the boat for the sake of it but rather finding what works and what doesn’t. Making things simple for the user. I’m completely paraphrasing probably a couple of weeks worth emails beings fired between the ENTIRE design team, which of course included Matt at every step of the way (we didn’t have a mailing list until Matt set one up for us). It was agreed that we wouldn’t move to anything radical unless we felt it served a specific purpose.
I should have seen the writing on the wall to be honest. As the design went forward Matt seemed to implement things he liked and not bother with things he didn’t. So the blue hues made it into the design, as did the pods on the side, but little else. To be fair to him at this stage we really hadn’t moved every single aspect forward as you see it in the final mock ups.
The days went by and action on Shuttle was sporadic at best. We’d go through these massive bursts of creativity and energy and information sharing. Every once in a while one of us would prod the team to get it’s finger out and continue with this project. You might think it should be easy but people have lives and many things to do get in the way and it’s not like any of us didn’t have other projects on at the time.
Lets make one thing clear here. I am a finisher. I complete the projects I’ve actively put my name down for. I’m not in the business of making a claim for something and not going through with it. I’ve proven this time and time again. Even when things get tough, even when it seems like it’s not even worth it, I will continue to plough forward even if it’s only me, with the hopes that those around me will feel good enough for them to contribute as and when they seem fit. Contributing to Open Source should never feel like a chore. It should be fun, it should be something you actually want to contribute towards.
So in a last attempt before I completely gave up on the project I dived into the designs. For two weeks straight I would come in from work and spend 4-5 hours implementing the designs. I tried hard to keep with EVERYTHING we’d discussed in the past. The dos and dont. I tried to find solutions to design aspects we hadn’t really covered. I’ve not had that massive creative burst of energy in years (and this was done on the back end of creating the FOFRedux redesigned UI). I tried taking into consideration things that although I didn’t agree with I had to make concessions to allow for.
A prime example is the dashboard. We were told not to go too far with this because lots of discussions were going on in the hackers mailing list and it would probably be the one place that we didn’t have much say in. This is all well and good, so I tried to come up with a solution I could at least stomach. It’s easily my least favourite page of the entire design.
Once the mock ups had been completed I left them with the rest of the team for comments to be put on the table for them to change whatever everyone felt worked and didn’t work. We then proceeded to discuss how we were going to implement the designs. Matt was NEVER truly forthcoming about how this was all going to be implemented. We discussed the issue further, but once again he was as elusive as ever. When a response finally came back I didn’t know how to react. Thankfully other members of the team did. The designs were not some chicken to pick and choose at what you like and what you don’t like. They present a certain level of uniformity across the pages. They follow a specific design thought, and a great deal of thought and attention to detail has gone into them.
After we talked about it a bit more, and we were promised by Matt that things would get incorporated into the WordPress core, however it would take some time and it was mainly to make sure that people didn’t get jarred with the changes in one go, this was a solution I could honestly live with. The design wouldn’t be hacked but implemented gradually. So I went forward and released the mockups because they were the culmination of our active involvement in the project as things would now begin to get integrated into the core code. Of course things would change or be tweaked as the design was implemented but by and large it would remain the same.
Any which way you cut it that’s why Shuttle never made it into the design of WordPress. It has nothing to do with us being lazy or that we couldn’t be bothered to do anything but the photoshop files. Joshua had begun implementing the design on his own machine, we were discussing the logistics of how this project would be implemented into the code. However as it turns out there doesn’t seem like there was/is any commitment from the WordPress Dev team to incorporate these designs. If there was a commitment it would take 3 guys 4 weeks TOPS to deal with it all. There are well over 100,000 WordPress users, many of which are pretty capable with both CSS/PHP/JS. Hell there are people out there that are already implementing this off their own backs.
It doesn’t seem like the WordPress development team (and by definition Automattic team) are keeping to their word because the latest addition to the Automattic team is now going back to square one to start over, asking people the same questions we did when we first started the project.
Bryan joined the shuttle team late in the game and in some ways I think he didn’t feel as comfortable jumping into the design. He’s a fine addition to the Automattic team, and more importantly I like the guy, so none of this is aimed at him. He has been given new directions by the powers that be. Strip it down, build it up again from the ground if we have to. Why is it called Shuttle:Atlantis? Maybe because Matt didn’t like the first one? That’s what it boils down to to be honest. The alarm bells started going off when I read the first things to come from Bryan over of the WordPress.com blog.
So I’d like to address those that didn’t like the Shuttle mockups. You (the collective you) got 5 people (plus 1) devoting a massive amount of their time to make your blogging experience more enjoyable; more usable; more fun. We didn’t ask for compensation and we didn’t ask for anything in return. We didn’t rush into this and we certainly didn’t hack through the designs. We did this because we believed in the sotfware. We believed in the people behind it and the people using it. None of us on the team are new to open source contribution. Michael’s contribution doesn’t need much introduction (Kubrick and K2), similarly with Chris (whose contributions extend far into the past of WordPress, Persian, plugins galore, K2), Joen does this for a living and has contributed for the admin panel on Zenphoto (including the default theme) and his wordpress theme Fauna. I have given the open source world Manji & Rin and contributed in the redesign of the FOFRedux UI. Joshua has answered enough support questions to make my head dizzy. Bryan has contributed to the world ChaoticSoul.
Open source is great because you can contribute to the source in a positive way, otherwise none of us would be actively giving to it so freely. That however is not the universal truth. At least that doesn’t seem to be the case in the WordPress world. This is a shame because part of WordPress’s success is the people involved with the world it surrounds. I have said many times before that is one of the things that elevates it above other open source initiatives.
It’s a shame really. Has WordPress really gotten so big that those in charge of implementing it no longer care for those that devote their time? As long as you’re creating a theme or a plugin that’s great, just don’t even bother thinking about contributing to the final product in any way. That kind of contribution is obviously not welcomed. There was a time when the Shuttle mockups, created exclusively for making WordPress prettier, would have been taken in with grateful arms. It seems that time for WordPress has passed.
Compare the current admin panel with those presented in the Shuttle mockups. Once you’ve done that go back to the top and compare it with Version 1.5.
Do you see something different. One was designed and thought through. The other is an ad hoc implementation of core ideas. I could go on at length to discuss the design decisions to be honest with you however I tend to allow the work speak for itself.
Ultimately I’m extremely proud of the work we did in TRYING to make the WordPress admin a better looking more usable place. The online friendships I’ve forged with the Shuttle team are thanks enough, even though the work we did was ultimately not appreciated. This is probably the very last time that I talk about Shuttle, unless of course someone implements the design aspects of the work we created as a plugin or in another way.
I got this link (via Sylvane) yesterday and I’ve watched it like 10 times now. Every time I watch political debates/interviews I always find it extremely frustrating because the people are not talking about the real issues here, they’re smoke screened out. The ‘objective’ journalism is lost. In this interview George Galloway rips Anne (I have no idea what her full name is nor do I care) a new asshole as he COMPLETELY destroys her.
It’s really funny because these ‘journalists’ have got pointed questions that are meant to phase the interviewee. You can see it very clearly. The questions are meant to illicit discomfort and many who are not apt in their expressions will fumble. In this interview George not only slaps everything she says but he puts her on the back foot at every single stage. You can even hear the rustle of the paper as she’s trying desperately to read off the next ‘pointed’ questions.
What’s interesting is the fact that the mere mention of his name provides polarised views instantly. I mentioned his name several times yesterday and got anything from quiet disapproval, to cheers, to claims he’s the best MP Britain has at the moment, to ‘isn’t’ he that guy from Big Brother'. He reminds me of Michael Moore in that respect. You can definitely put me in the camp of people that rate him, because he was able to put in a 10 minute interview what hasn’t been said by anyone in 27 days.
This is what I’ve been reading my feeds from for the past couple of days :).
I promised the guys on the dev team I’d keep it quiet until we had more kinks ironed out, but I’ve got to say that I’m so excited and over the moon that the new FOFRedux UI is now a part of the trunk code and looking SUPREME, that I had to share that bit of news with everyone. If you’re asking yourself what FOFRedux actually is, then I suggest you go over to the project page to find out a bit more about it all.
If you’re interested in actually trying it then I suggest you DOWNLOAD the latest snapshot. Remember this is NOT the latest STABLE version. This is STILL in development, so things can still go wrong. There are still loads more work to be done, but it’s still better than 50% of the other feed readers out there. Give it a few more versions and it’ll the best feed reader on the net.
One thing that I’ve definitely noticed is that after using it for a couple of days it’s made reading my feeds that much more enjoyable, which to my mind was/is the whole point of the redesign. Make the programme more fun and more intuative to actually use. I feel extremely proud to be a part of this team and supremely overjoyed with the overall results. In my mind this is a fantastic example of how great things can be achieved in an open source project and I’d really like to thank the team for accepting me into the group and allowing me to contribute to the project.
A new Pixar animation is generally cherished over here in Casa Broken Kode; then again do you blame me? After all they ‘sand the underside of the drawer’ (it’s a policy they have at Pixar regarding how much car and attention they give to their movies). The last couple of features from Pixar have been absolutely amazing. From the brilliant Finding Nemo, to The Incredibles, to Monsters Inc, every one of their movies, OOZES with characters and colour and story. Each movie has a clarity of vision and a crispness and love of one’s craft that the viewer generally cannot help but be drawn into these magical worlds that they create. With an introduction like that and knowing how hard it is to follow up on any kind of successful feature, be it a website, film, graphic novel, album, how does Cars fair in comparison?
The story in simple terms follow Lightning McQueen as he tries to travel to California along Route 66 in order to compete in a race for the Piston Cup (Daytona or something similar I guess, don’t know much about America motorsports). McQueen is not a very pleasant chap. He’s obnoxious, he’s over confident and he doesn’t have any friends. His trip to California takes a bit of a detour as he finds himself in the middle of Radiator Springs. A town where life has passed it by. It’s here that he learns that there’s more to life than just racing. All very inspirational, all very cotton candy type stuff, which is part of the problem.
I’m going to give you the bad news at the start of this review simply because it’s easy to be done with that aspect of it all, so that I can concentrate on the stuff I actually liked. The story believe it or not is actually the worst part of this movie. The reason is because it felt too formulaic for me. As I was watching this movie, I started remembering a couple of the previous Pixar movies and they all seem to follow a very similar story structure and then I remembered who was directing this. It’s a Lasseter movie. He’s a great director, don’t get me wrong, but the story and structure of his movies follow a pattern. Once you’ve watched them as many times as I have, you notice this pattern and can see it coming. With regards to the story, I guess this particular one is only better than ‘A Bug’s Life’ which I swear I can’t even remember what the story was actually about. I remember all sorts of dialogue from the rest of their library, but not that one. I don’t think Cars will be that unmemorable, it’s just that it’s not what I’m going to remember this movie by.
Another aspect of this movie that sticks out is that you honestly have to been American, or have visited the states to fully appreciate this movie. It’s about Cars. It’s for people who generally like cars and everything that comes with this sort of thing. I’m not a massive car fan in general, although I love Formula 1 (or at least I used to until this year which is driving me [no pun intended] further and further away from the sport) I’m seriously not this car aficionado. My cousins (and especially my brother I’ve noticed) can’t stop talking about cars but I’ve got to admit that the whole topic BORES me to tears. Seriously.
Which brings me onto the elements of the movie that I will remember very clearly and constantly chuckle about. The stars of this movie, wasn’t the animation itself, unlike previous Pixar outings, but rather the characters. It’s all about the characters. In a clever way the creators over at Pixar tried to make a car that everyone could associate themselves with.
My favourite car without a doubt was Guido. The guy was too cute in every sense of the word and he embodied a lot of things that I can relate to intimately. Every scene the car was in (along with Luigi) where the classic scenes. When he shows up at the drag race with the massive Italian style Afro I nearly fell of my seat. His ultimate display of skill in the final minutes of the movie and his subsequent ‘Pit Stop’ were absolutely brilliant. I really want to know what he shouts out in Italian because I’m pretty sure it’s another fantastic set of lines (for all those in the dark he apparently can only say two words in English, ‘Pit Stop’). I will most definitely be getting a Guido for my birthday (I’ve already started hinting to people that I’d like one). The interaction between the army car and the hippy was brilliant. ‘Hey man, RESPECT the classics’. I even found ‘Mater’ mildly amusing.
The guys at Pixar did something different in the final scenes of the credits. Rather than showing ‘outtakes’ like they usually do, they decided to extend things a little bit and actually try and poke some fun in another way. Some parts were pretty damn funny, while others could have done with a little bit more fun injected in them. The little ‘Mack’ section was absolutely hilarious. Really very funny.
‘Cars’ was without a doubt well worth the cash I slapped down to watch it. Was it as good as the other Pixar movies, not really no. It’s terribly tough trying to beat a lot of their movies and I think that’s the problem they face. They bettered ‘A Bug’s Life’ but not the other ones. It had it’s charm and introduced us to some classic characters and a decent yarn to keep you occupied.
Have you picked a friends for Firefox Day? I’m stumped as I’ve been shouting about Firefox from the top of my lungs for the past couple of years…
Grid Systems by Kimberly Elam (published by PA Press) is required reading for ANYONE even thinking about jumping into graphic design of any description. I blasted through this book in a week and it’s definitely one of those books you refer back to again and again as it’s a reference book as well as a book which generally teaches you the basics.
One of the nicest adverts I’ve seen since the Sony Bravia advert. This is for Sky’s new HD service. Also on the Bravia advert, did you know they’re prepping up a brand new one as well? This kind of reminds me of the mid/early 90s when Levis held the fort for adverts that were more art than just promotion of the products.
Saw ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ yesterday. Got me some thoughts about it, but as you can expect I’m going to be talking about story details, so consider this your SPOILER WARNING. Don’t look further if you’ve not seen this movie yet.
Dead Man’s Chest follows on from the previous Pirates movie. The movie begins as Elizabeth and William Turner’s wedding is interrupted by the Royal Navy or some authority as they place them under arrest. However this is not just to uphold the law, it would seem the Commandant has ulterior motives. He blackmails Turner into going out to find Captain Jack Sparrow and retrieve his compass, that as you remember from the previous movie, didn’t work.
Meanwhile Captain Jack is in a whole WORLD of trouble as it seems he struck a deal with Davey Jones for 10 years of being a Captain of the Black Pearl in exchange for his soul (and 100 years of serving on Davey Jone’s ship). Of course Jack’s not all that keen to get going with this plan, so he’s trying to find a key that unlocks Davey Jone’s chest.
That’s as spoiler free as it gets people, from now on this really is your final warning. So anyway I really didn’t understand the reason why Davey Jones took his heart out and put it in that chest. I know SOMEONE mentioned something in the movie, but honestly it whizzed by so quickly I have no idea what the actual reason was, so if you picked this up, please do tell. I guess that’s one of my complaints about the movie. They had so much story to tell that someone was a bit asleep at the wheel when they went and edited this thing. Not much editing happened as far as I’m concerned. I could have done without the cannibals scenes or that whole ridiculous fighting scene on the spinning wheel thing. The whole scene with Elizabeth and the two other pirate monkeys on the beech was pretty cringe worthy as well.
The thing I will say however is that it’s Johnny Depp’s movie. I pretty much guarantee that if Jack Sparrow wasn’t in this movie, NO ONE would bother watching it, because to be blunt, everyone else pales in comparison to what the man does. His eyes and his facial expressions are spot on. The carefree way in which he’s constantly running around the screen is also really funny. He’s definitely got all the best lines and he’s the kookiest character of the lot, which means a lot really. He also claims the best scene in the entire movie, where he utters: ' Hello beastie'. Very cool scene.
Regarding the rest of the story, it was pretty standard fun with a great little ending with Barbosa making his return. Dunno how he did it but I’m sure they’ll be explaining it sometime next year when the third one is released.
I was particularly impressed with ILM’s effects on this movie, which seriously did showcase all that they can do with regards to integrating all sorts of things with the live action. From the destruction of various ships by the aforementioned beastie, all the way to Davey Jone’s octopus beard thingy. One point that I’d like to mention was the great use of colours in this movie. The apple eaten by Barbosa right at the end, to the costumes and the various beaches around the place, colour plays such an important part in this movie.
Better get comfortable, because you’ll need to be as the one thing that can definitely say about this movie is that it is LONG. It’s about 45 minutes longer than it really needed to be. There was a slew of sections in this movie that simply dragged on longer than I would have wanted. Ana mentioned it at the same time as me, because every time you thought it was going to end, it just kept going. Paradoxically, I have never yawned as much coming out of movie in my life. It’s not that I was bored or anything, probably just tired but it was very strange.
I did enjoy this movie, with the exception that I thought it was far too long in areas, but that’s the beauty of DVD, where I’ll be sure to fast forward those areas I thought stretched out too long.
Reason I’ve not been able to write anything these past days is because I’ve been feeling numb. Every time I sit down to type anything I feel ill and the words don’t go anywhere. I start thinking about the situation currently going on in Lebanon and I feel this sorrow and it takes over my entire body. I’ve been avoiding many of my friends because I don’t want to depress them. They can’t help the situation and the problem for me is that at the moment, neither can I.
All I can do, like the millions of Lebanese around the world is see my country brought down to it’s knees and it’s landscapes razed to the ground. I’ve been feeling numb but that feeling is slowly subsiding because like the Lebanese people, my resolve is strong. My faith in my people and my country is even stronger. We shall walk proud again and the country shall be rebuilt once more, of that I have no doubt.
However in order for the country to be rebuilt it will need work and it will need help. I’m currently going to begin work on various ways in which I can personally help Lebanon get back on it’s feet. I’m not going to say bringing it back to how it was, I’m going to say better than how it was. I’m beginning to feel anger and with that feeling comes a flurry of ideas. Some of these ideas will either take shape and bear fruit or will be lost and forgotten in the caverns of my mind. However I will see Lebanon free and beautiful once again. You see the bastards (I’m not going to specify which ones, because in this situation they are LEGION) seem to forget that the sun always rises after the night and that…
a phoenix NEVER dies.
Some of the funniest shit I’ve seen in a good long while. I need laughter right now, otherwise I’ll be going insane. Very inventive; it’s like the antithesis of that microsoft packaging advert from a while back that came out of Microsoft themselves. Tres amusant.
I was talking to Kyle a couple of days ago. He was expressing how he liked the summer and then we got a bit geeky and started talking operation systems. He’s recently made the jump from Windows to the land of the Apple, while I have dumped my windows box for a shiney new ubuntu setup. Kyle not known to be one to mince words. He’s easily one of the most direct people I know online. What’s scarey is that he often says things with a decent amount of authority with proof and counter arguements to back this opinion up. He’s definitely not scared to go in the direct opposite channel to what people are talking about at that particular moment in time. So taking a page out of his book I’ll make an observation and a prediction.
In five years time the main operating system in the world will be a flavour of Linux. I’m not saying it’ll be Ubuntu (although it’s definitely on the right track), just that this is something that will happen. 5 years; that’s when the linux operating system will hit critical mass. By critical mass, I’m talking with this definition in mind:
I swear I can actually hear everyone turning off and pointing their browser elsewhere, but hear me out. Yes I am still new and excited about Ubuntu and everything is fresh and new to me right, so it stands to reason that I’m in my honeymoon period, after all I’ve been locked to the Windows operating system for the past 10 years or so. The truth of the matter is we’re on the cusp of something important. To illustrate my point, I present exhibit A. Everyone loves graphs, so here’s one that shows the difference in development cycles of proprietary software and open source software.
Yes it’s COMPLETELY made up, but I’m just trying to illustrate a point here. Proprietary software works in this way. You have a piece of software and you update it for the following reasons:
So what should you do in order to make some noise? You add new features. You do things the competition are not doing, and you do it in a certain scheduled manner that doesn’t make people who paid for it 18 months ago feel a bit cheated that they’ve got to shell out the cash all over again so soon. Bring in discontent within the ranks which is not good for business. Sometimes what happens is that the software feels bloated, takes ages to load anything. It doesn’t really make all that much business sense spending a great deal of time on trying to clean up the code and cutting things down, because it’s not as big a marketing push as just saying you’ve got 115 new features or whatever.
Meanwhile, in the land of the open, you’ve got MILLIONS of people ALL over the world, some paid, some not, constantly chugging at the plethora of open source projects. Open source doesn’t benefit much from adding new features just for the sake of this. This is very clear with such powerful applications such as Blender (for 3D modelling) and Xara for vector illustrations. Lightweight programmes that do their functions well and quickly with the minimum amount of fuss.
What’s the downside of all of this? Well the only thing I can think of is the fact that open source isn’t really in any hurry to get anywhere. The model is based upon slow updates, on a constant basis. Open Source doesn’t really benefit from doing things quickly really. Also every once in a while you also get projects getting abandoned. However it’s good to understand that by their very nature these projects can be picked up anywhere down the line. All that’s happened is that the process and development has been slowed down (so some projects might not exihibit the above graph exactly but might have a plataeu or two. A great example is WordPress. It’s a fork of the abandoned B2 project. WordPress is now much more used than B2 ever was.
Open Source will eventually surpass proprietary software because there are more people devoted to the packages and their ranks are expanding. However the reason why companies will eventually jump ship to the land of the penguin is because of the bottom line. When you’ve got software that is completely free, operates better than the proprietary ones and can be modified to do your bidding without any consequence to that bottom line, it will begin making business sense.
Currently Linux isn’t there yet. In many respects it has definitely surpassed Windows on many, many levels. However there are other areas that could definitely use some SERIOUS polish. I believe that polish will take a good 5 years before Linux is at that stage of the fight where it can take on both Microsoft and Apple.
The common link between Microsoft and Apple is that both of these companies are slowly heading down a very restrictive road, a claustraphobic one; which is in direct opposition to Linux which has begun it’s accention up and open field. It’s early days but mark my words this will happen, it’s only a matter of time.
For those in the dark, yesterday evening the state of Israel has declared war on the country of Lebanon. This is not the first time that hostile action has been taken against Lebanon, however it does mean that 6 years of peace in the country have been brought to a devastating halt. Today we (the Lebanese) were reminded of our country 20 years ago, a recent history we’re trying to heal from struggling every day to building a better future. Some would not have this. Some will not allow this.
It’s an interesting word. It’s also a word which I have been made to detest because of it’s hypocritical misuse by those that benefit from it’s misuse. Whenever that word is used the instant image most people conjure up in their heads is an Arab. I conjure up a completely different image in my mind. My terrorists are well dressed politicians and ‘security ministers’ living on stolen land being paid by other well dressed politicians and industry leaders the world over (who by association are terrorists themselves), I’m not going to drag the who’s because they know who they are.
Who are the terrorists flying over Lebanon readying the missiles to destroy the power stations? Ready to take out all the telephone lines. Ready to destroy all the infrastructure that thousands of people have worked so hard to build from the ground up?
I work in the construction industry. I’ve been working on one particular building for over 2.5 years now but the time it’s complete over 4 years will have passed since this project began; it takes 4 seconds to demolish a building, 4 seconds to destroy bridges, and a few seconds to snuff out countless lives. These are acts of terrorism. The fear of millions (yes we are legion) of Lebanese the world over afraid of returning back to their countries. Lebanon has been the stomping ground of other nations in the region.
To the Israeli people, if you’re glad your government has been to war then feel ashamed of yourselves. Aggression only breeds aggression, and your government has shown this aplenty in the 60 years it’s been in power. Your presence has done nothing but bring heart ache and sorrow to a region and a generation of people that have learnt to hate EVERYTHING you represent, because of what you do and how you do it.
It was as if your government was waiting for a reason to bring the country 30 years back. History repeats itself once again. Stupid provocation was there, however the response showed a complete and IMMENSE amount of stupidity. You think this will keep you safe? By destroying what others have rebuilt since the last time you YOURSELVES destroyed it? You gain nothing here but more blood on your hands and more contempt for what you are. You are being led by some UGLY human beings (calling them anything else would be disrespectful, after all only human beings can be so vile to one another), whom you voted and chose to represent you.
If you ever harboured thoughts that peace could ever be reached in the Middle East, let me be the first to wipe those ideas completely from your mind. Today’s actions proved to the world that peace in the Middle East will never be achieved except in one of two ways:
I’m a natural born optimist but even I couldn’t keep my head up today, I’ve broken down into tears several times today. I feel frustrated, angry, completely helpless and have this sorrow inside me that I know many people all over the world share with me and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. War is a fucking ugly thing. For those that have never experienced it, be thankful for that fact.
It’s even more hard when you know your side is completely powerless to counter these acts in any way. Lebanon is a poor country. It’s a country in massive debt, controlled by outside forces that refuse to let it float above water. Every time the people struggle and fight their way for some air we’re pushed back down with the knowledge that if we ever thought of going back up there’s a hammer waiting to repeat it’s action.
The Lebanese people have been here before. We have fought this war before. The wounds have not yet healed. One thing that the Lebanese people have shown is just how strong of mind and will they actually are. Every time you blow things up they get built again. All that the state of Israel has done is shown it’s criminal behaviour once more.
Usually when things are quiet on the ‘kode it’s generally because I’m busy with stuff and can’t really concentrate on writing anything. Well that’s the case right now, however I’m supremely busy at work rather than outside work, which is not really how I like to be. Things have been COMPLETELY insane for me, as I’ve seriously had a load of projects either land on my lap that need IMMEDIATE attention or projects that have been with me for a while that have literally EXPLODED. Well ok I exaggerate maybe they haven’t exploded, but simply demand a great deal of my time, which I can’t actually give.
It’s really strange how there are these distinct patterns how your mind and body handles pressure. In the beginning everything is seriously very tough, mentally tough. After going on for a while it becomes the norm for you and you’re not as bothered about it all, and then comes the stage where you think it’s just funny. I’m in the not bothered stage. If I start acting like the Joker and posting really punny jokes, please shoot me.
I expect to be out of the woods by the end of the week (after a slight fashion) but the future looks exceptionally busy as I will be talking a bit more about my next project because it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever been involved with, so along with that comes some serious challenges.
Just noticed that the project I’m working on has actually got a website. I’m currently going through the final stages of the electrical design for this project which is one of the most complex things because of it’s very nature as a Grade 2 listed building.
One thing is for sure regarding the switch to Linux is that there is soo much to learn, however I am actually really looking forward to the plethora of applications that I can start using and learning and the various things I can actually start creating. I’m going to share some of the things that I’ve found out during this last week of tinkering around with Ubuntu and Linux in general. (It’s a pretty long one again, you have been warned).
Google is your friend, so is the Ubuntu wiki site as is this forum. Now comes my most important tip for you. If you have a 64bit processor and have never played with Linux before and therefore not completely comfortable (like me) with doing all sorts of stuff DO NOT USE THE 64Bit version of the programme. Seriously, it’s far too much hassle because although your system will run smoothly and quickly, what it’ll also do is give you some serious problems regarding proprietary software support that you can’t really do without. What exactly am I talking about? Well upon installing the 64Bit Ubuntu I realised that the following programmes were not supported because 64Bit versions of the software have not been released.
In order to get them to work you need to go in and get your hands dirty with code and all sorts. Erm no thanks. It might be ok for someone who’s been doing this for a couple of years or whatever, I however don’t want to have to fight my operating system to get things to work. So I installed the i686 version and EVERYTHING worked straight out of the box.
I’ve currently got a partition of my harddrive for Windows, when I absolutely HAVE to go back there and do something that is only achievable within that environment (like testing a website for IE, although there must be a way from within Ubuntu, but I haven’t really researched the point to be honest).
Once you’ve installed everything, go over to EasyUbuntu and install all the bit and pieces within minutes, so rather than spending 2 weeks slowly downloading various elements for your Windows box, it’s all there within minutes. Very cool. I only had to quickly edit a file to get my graphics card working properly but that process was honestly as painless as it can get.
With that out of the way I can definitely say that I have just experienced the first taste of the future of the desktop and it’s a beauty. Everything just seems to work right out of the box. The only thing I’m having a bit of trouble making it work and sing the way it should is my ipod, however I know that’s not really a Linux problem completely as the ipod used to fuck up on Windows all the time, it’s one of the annoying things about an ipod. Hopefully I’ll find a way to get it sorted out.
There is a certain attention to detail which I am seriously liking. Subtle things like hiding or making the top and bottom toolbars appear, (the icons realign once you’ve taken this action which is a nice little touch). It’s a simple thing but it does make the desktop less cluttered. Customising the toolbars is extremely easy and intuative, while realigning the drop down menus couldn’t be more simple using the Alacarte Menu Editor.
I’m also really loving the multiple desktops. It’s nothing as flash as XGL and what’s going over at SUSE but it’s a major step over Windows XP, think of it like tabbed web browsing only for your desktop. Debian does have a few projects that are trying to make the 3D desktop into a functional reality however it’s a little while off me thinks. I’ve also installed Kompose which gives Ubuntu Expose like functionality. It’s a little rough around the edges but it’s still early days (still on version 0.52) so here’s hoping the developers over at Ubuntu take heed and included a proper working version of this in the next version of Ubuntu.
One of the things I’ve found to be a great deal faster and more efficient than Windows by a long way is recognition of alternative media. While Windows might take a minute to think about my external harddisc or a DVD being attached to the computer, Ubuntu picks these things up straight away. It’s really bizarre and a great thing to behold to by tired Windows eyes. I thought that was normal, now I know better. It’s Windows fucking up.
If you’re new to this as well, definitely download gnome-art. It’s for the Art Manager system which allows you to customise the look of your setup completely. From the border to the application look to the icons themselves to the backgrounds. No more of this proprietary bull ship Windows blinds and icon packaging systems that you had to download and hack around with that limited what you could do. It’s all under your finger tips. If you want your install to look like a mac, it’s all there to do within seconds. Seeing as I love to hack around with what I’m looking at (hey I’m a fickle designer) this is a great little programme.
My previous problems with installing software were all due to running the 64Bit architecture. Now installing software is easier than it ever was on Windows, and the great thing about it all is that it’s all free and allows me to do everything I want straight away. I just search repositories, click on what I want and apply. Having ‘tried’ to do something similar with Microsoft’s update system and having it crap up on me at every step of the way, this was a serious breathe of fresh air. I will be talking more extensively at the various software packages I’m using to accomplish various tasks in due time (give them proper reviews), but needless to say that I’m very excited about my new operating system.
Now that I don’t have to worry about 64Bits and all that crap, honestly I don’t have any complaints at the present moment. The Ubuntu forums and wiki have helped me go through and modify everything pretty quickly and painlessly. There are things that I think Ubuntu could learn from the upcoming SUSE Enterprise edition however. The real difference for me is the addition of the Beagle search function in just about every folder/window. Beagle in case you didn’t know is this great little programme that not only searches the file names themselves but the contents of those files as well. For the SUSE Enterprise Edition they’ve included this everywhere which is a great idea. Also Novell have cleverly redone the computer input menu. I do want this to be done for Ubuntu as well. Telling me about my various partitions and drives is another great little detail that makes me take more charge of my computer which is what this is all about.
One thing that I’ve not been able to sort out however is loading websites seems to take a great deal of time. It’s like it’s thinking about things for a little while before it extracts all the information. This is on every single website I visit. I’m sure there’s a fix for this so if anyone had the same problem and found a way out please do share it with me.
I’m running on Ubuntu now and I’m starting to get comfortable with the setup in general. I’m currently writing several posts about the experience so far however the biggest problem I’ve had to be honest is installing programmes to be honest, not programmes in the repositories because that was far too easy, I’m talking about downloaded packages. I have absolutely NO IDEA what the hell I’m supposed to do with these things. They’re as good to me as a kick in head. I’ve got a 64Bit AMD and that seems to be giving me some trouble in various places. I can’t seem to find some proper tutorials AIMED at complete novices, the support pages don’t cover the topics as fully as I would like them, which is a travesty to be honest. Ubuntu could use a Podz if you ask me.
So I’ve downloaded the 64Bit enabled Pixel programme (I’ve already bought the license) and I have no idea what to do with the resulting thing that I’ve downloaded. Here’s what’s in the folder. Now I’ve got a setup file, fantastic, I double click and nothing happens. In fact nothing really happens when I click anything (except the license of course). I’ve downloaded the file twice and it’s the same thing.
What exactly am I looking at and why isn’t that setup file,…setting up the bloody programme?
Also I have no idea how to install GimpShop because I can’t seem to find it in the repositories or anything like that which is a shame, so if you’ve got some bright ideas or tutorials to share that would be well appreciated.
You all seen the latest Inkscape? They’ve taken a page from Xara and included the colour palette at the bottom of the application. Also they’ve updated those amatuer looking icons from the previous version as well. Hopefully they’ll take a hint and use the tango icons for a unified look in web applications. I’ve not played around with it yet to be honest but they’re heading in the right direction. Here’s a prediction though, I estimate that in 3 years time it should be as mighty as anything else out there.
I’ve been pretty quiet this last week and there’s actually two main reasons for that. The first one is due to the fact that I’ve been extremely busy at work. Every summer it happens to me and this one is no different. I’ve been landed with far too much work to handle in an exceptionally small amount of time. I’ve had it bad before which is why I’m actually completely calm because I’m also a lot more confident with my abilities to handle said work and present it to the usual anal retentive standards that I demand. That I guess is part of my problem. I actually tried to deal with issues in a more relaxed manner and have found that the problem with this approach is that things come back and bite you squarely in the ass.
The other major problem on my plate is my current computer setup. I’ve talked about my thoughts on moving over to Linux once and for all. In fact I actually installed Linux Suse Enterprise Edition earlier this week. However I have no idea what I’m doing and this has reflected in me fucking up my hardisk royally. So what’s a man to do, when there’s trouble in the neighbourhood? He calls on Franchesco (the PC doctor) to sort the mess I created like a 4 year old in the kitchen. I should hopefully be running SUSE and Ubuntu and a small section for me to migrate all my files over from Windows sometime tomorrow. I’ll definitely be talking about my thoughts on the entire system and how it can be improved and how it’s better than Windows and where it falters.
My deadlines at work should come to a close sometime around Thursday, where life on the net will resume back to normal and I can start hammering all those pesky little project that I’ve got in mid development that just need that final push to complete. I’ll list through them for completeness sake:
I’ve got a mini update that I really want to make on the site and just close out all those areas that I said I’d complete in due time once I settled into my new design. So I’ll hopefully be bringing out that update in the not too distant future. This site design is here to stay for a good while, however I do fully intend to keep tweaking and adding and enhancing, this is one design that I feel completely comfortable doing this as it’s super light and super simple.
Major things will start happening over at Splash Panel. I’ve not been very good in keeping up the reviews in the past couple of months. That’s mainly due to my world turning over around me. I’m not going to say much other than it’s great news that I’m hoping to really build on as it’s given me a great buzz and a renewed enthusiasm for the site which, I hadn’t so much lost, as I’d just had to take a break. Writing those reviews and commentary does take time and I’m really not in the mood to hack any reviews out for the sake of writing something.
When people come to Splash Panel I want them to be ready with their credit card in hand to go and plonk some money down for the book I’ve just reviewed. You see I don’t intend any bad reviews of books to be posted on the site. Life’s far too short for that and there are far too many great graphic novels to read that deserve my (and your) attention more.
The delayed first season of Broken Kode in dead tree format will come out at the end of July. I’ve fully edited the book. I’m still however on the fence regarding whether or not I should publish the ENTIRE book, including those post I really didn’t think much of, or to make it a more compact and consise book with the best of posts? The current edited book actually has posts identified as interesting or boring reads (i.e posts you really shouldn’t bother reading). Any thoughts on this subject would be well appreciated.
See I know how people keep claiming how Ubuntu is the way forward for the desktop linux and how it’s been ‘made for humans’. Even though SUSE Desktop Enterprise edition hasn’t been released yet, I was keen on getting in on the action a little bit in advance, so I got SUSE 10.1 (it’s the full community version that’s got most of the SDE features) just so I can start getting into the groove.
It all installed more or less without too much hassle. The only problem so far has been installing my graphics card driver. I swear to god, it’s like pulling teeth. I know there has been some serious enhancements since the last time I checked in on Linux, but alas the one thing that still remains a mindfield of pain is installing a programme. In my mind it should be as easy dragging and dropping a file into a folder and just riding the installation setup. I shouldn’t have to sort out permissions and remember syntax and type in all sorts of things to get my graphics card to work (in case you were wondering, it still doesn’t actually work).
Once I get my house in order I’ll be sure to write some more indepth posts about what and why I think can still be improved regarding how Linux does things. I don’t want to critise because that’s counter productive. I’m just going to offer a helping hand in terms of how people expect certain things to work. It’ll take some time but things are generally heading in the correct direction.
Anyone mind helping translate this site post for me? I’ve been getting some a serious referal spike from it, but I have no idea what it’s saying?
When the Shuttle images design were released for general consumption I expected a great number of people to jump on board and help out Matt in the implementation of the code. Now I’m not sure how far the WordPress team have got with version 2.1, as I’ve heard some little bits and pieces over the last week or so with Ryan doing what he does best.
However I’d like to point out Mark over at the Sidejob, who’s actually taken the images and made them a reality on his install. This is the sort of thing I like to see. WordPress is a community EFFORT. Not so keen on the yellow background but we can work with that :).
In part one of this series I talked about why I’m going to be switching over to Linux. In this part I’m going to talk more about the actual additional software and what my options as a designer and illustrator actually are. There are only a handful of reasons why I would stick with Microsoft and windows. What’s really funny is that neither actually come from Microsoft itself. The first and major reason for me would be Adobe’s Photoshop and the now defunct (and one of my favourite applications) Macromedia’s (once again it will always be Macromedia for me) Freehand. There are other programmes of course that would make me flinch, such as Indesign and believe it or not my favourite text-editor, PHP Designer.
So before I made the leap, I started thinking about this whole thing a little more. Would it be a viable jump or could someone who considers themselves a designer/illustrator to make the jump into the Linux environment? Is it too harsh a landscape that I should just bite the bullet and stay put?
You’d be surprised how much stuff is available to the Linux user, either for a very small fee or completely free, so lets have a look at these options shall we.
The biggest news for me to be honest was that Xara Xtreme was completely open-sourced for Linux users. That’s absolutely fantastic news. That alone makes me calm about the loss of Freehand. One of the great things about Xara is the fact that the peeps behind this application seem to know what’s important. Don’t force additional features on the programme. Just make it really good at what it does. Make it fast (easily on of the fastest vector programme on the PC at least). Where Illustrator is the heaviest programme in the world Xara Xtreme flies. This is a huge boon to the open source community and people should really be jumping on this bandwagon as soon as possible. Version 0.5 was released a month ago and they’re looking for more people to help out. I guess the main reason why people haven’t jumped is probably because they’ve not heard about it. I just finished reading this review over at Linux.com and it sees things in a very similar way. If Xara do actually implement things properly it really could be one of the greatest gifts since Blender and Open Office.
While Inkscape is a good little programme and I would never dream of bad mouthing the valiant efforts of the open source community, it feels clunky to me. There are certain aspects of the programme that could use with a lot of polish and I’m sure it will eventually get there in due time. After all we’re still on version 0.42 of the programme, not exactly the most mature offering. Xara offers some level of maturity RIGHT NOW. It’s got around 10 years of experience behind it
Pixel seems like it’s going to be a kick ass application. It’s still in the Beta stage, but even at this stage it seems to be pretty mighty. I’ve downloaded the preview version and I’ve got to say that it’s incredibly nippy. It’s obviously not as polished as Photoshop, but I mean c’mon we’re on version 9 of that programme and it’s backed by a huge amount of developers. Just looking at what Pavel has done here, it does look as though he’s emulated the photoshop scope completely (which I dunno Adobe might have issues with this at some point) but he does add some seriously cool little features that PS doesn’t have which make perfect sense. Like an additional tab that has different configurations of the work space for any one document which enables you to flip and highlight different functions etc. It’s subtle stuff but it’s a got legs.
One thing as Marco rightly pointed out in the comments of the previous post is that it’s really important to have applications. While Linux isn’t over flowing with proprietary products to use within, that seems to be a trend that is changing. Hopefully people will start doing what This move also gives hope to the future of other software manufacturers out there and a nice trend of them trying to cater to the Linux market. They don’t have to be as fantastically cool as Xara and open source it but at least they can make it available to the Linux market.
One of the things that magazines and tutorials and graphic designers and illustrators all over the world try and hammer across, is that the programme that you use shouldn’t really matter to the final work that you produce. To a certain degree I agree. It shouldn’t matter, except when you end up fighting with the actual software to achieve your vision. That’s when it become counter productive. Currently my thinking is that maybe, just maybe the tools on Linux will enable me to achieve my vision. It’s an experiment and I’m always up for experimentation. If I don’t succeed then at least I’ll have given it my best shot. If I do succeed, then I’ll have broken away from the shackles of being bound.
I’ve been writing this post for a couple of days now, which is a bit unusual for me, so grab a coffee because I’m about to go into a pretty long one, so long I’ve had to split the topic into two parts. For this first post I’ll be talking about Linux, open-source, microsoft and specifically the new SUSE Enterprise Desktop distribution from Novell.
I’ve been a Windows user ever since I actually started using a computer. Over the past few years I’ve become more and more disenfranchised with the actual system. The reason behind this is very simple. I’ve been using the same environment for over 5 years now. Some would say well that this means I’m perfectly happy with the system that I’m actually using. In some ways I am, but that’s more due to familiarlity rather than anything else. The easiest way to put this into perspective is the difference I feel when using Firefox and if I’m FORCED to use Internet Explorer for some shitty programme at work (usually the bane of my life, timesheets).
In the same way that the Mozilla foundation took on Microsoft for a position in the web browser market and kept on pushing and pushing so is Novell primed to try and emulate that success, however taking on Microsoft at something that even Apple has found it terribly difficult to do and that’s take a decent slice out of the coorporate market. With this release Novell provides a completely viable alternative that is both INNOVATIVE, fresh and well thought out.
With that though in mind, Windows hasn’t really moved forward in these 5 years. Oh sure we’re “blessed” with SP1 and SP2 along with a couple of sellotape additions to the operating systems but it’s the same innovation that made Mozilla a player in the browser market that’s going to make Novell a contender for a slice of the desktop market and take it away from Vista. The truth of the matter is that I’ve not actually played around with this new OS (it’s currently in private beta). I’m just running on what I’ve been able to find out over at the Novell website which was enough to get me completely excited about the whole thing. You can also have a look at some preview videos showcasing the new operating system.
The first aspect that I seriously like is their ‘computer’ area. It’s simple and clear and very well thought out. Why is it a start menu or a little apple icon? It’s all to do with your computer and should be called as such. This I’m sure is all part of the Better Desktop initiative that is actually sponsored by Novell.
There are several enhancements to this desktop environment that are very exciting. Mainly the multiple desktop feature which has been a standard for many Linux distributions for a good long while now. It’s nice to have a great animated way to go through the multiple desktops. The ‘alt-tab’ function where you get a preview of the application is another fantastic addition to this environment as well. As well as the OS X tiled windows on the same screen feature also looks like a nice addition to it’s already impressive arsenal.
Of course the extra additions of being able to search through conversations emails, etc is another fantastic addition/feature.
Maybe I’m making far too much out of nothing. I’ve tried other linux distributions in the past that have been hailed as the second coming, and to be honest I’ve not be overtly impressed. However one thing I’m definitely sure about is that I’ve not been this excited to try and play around with an operating system in nearly 5 years, since XP was released.
I’m sure I’ll be able to grab a copy of the software before this date, but I think I’ll wait a little while and make sure a few of the bugs are ironed out before I make the leap. I might play around with the Live CD (for those in the dark about such things, Linux Live CD/DVDs enable you to check the operating system without actually installing it).
Join me for Part 2 when I talk about what this move means to the software I use as a designer and illustrator. Linux isn’t traditionally known as a platform that has the software that the creative community requires, namely Adobe and Macromedia (it will always be macromedia to me) products. The answers might surprise you.
Regarded by many as the best world cup goal ever, check out the second one by Esteban Cambiasso. There was 24 passes that put him in the position to score that goal. This sort of thing usually only happens in Japanese anime, not in the World Cup, which is what makes it special.
Just finished reading this book, which is definitely on my list of best books of 2006 already (I know we’re only just half way through the year) but this book does stand out very tall.
Blink is written by Malcolm Gladwell who has crafted the only book on psychology and how the human brain works that I’ve ever, not only been interested in reading, but actually got past the first paragraph.
Blink is all about rapid cognition and the way our brain works in such a way so as to actually aid us in making dicisions throughout our lives. It’s about those GUT feelings you get and all about the hows and the whys that you get them. It’s about how you can trust them and why you shouldn’t ALWAYS trust them. How your mind is sometimes misled and then the explanation about why it was mislead.
It’s truly a fascinating look at the world around you and more importantly the people and how you interact with these people. Once you’ve read this book you will start looking at people around you in a different way. You’ll begin to ‘read’ their reactions slightly differently. Body language and subtle twitches of their face will begin to shape a whole new meaning for you.
One of the great things about this book however is the style in which it is written. It’s got an almost informal feel to it all. Like Malcom was just sitting next to you and having a conversation with you about something he’s been researching for a while now. This would make an absolutely brilliant documentary and in many ways the book reads like one, in that it does reproduce a number of conversations with various characters and their experiences throughout the book. I guess that is ultimately what makes this book so readable is the fact that it doesn’t go on and on and bore you about the theory. He gives you a small description of the theory only AFTER he’s hooked you with the bait. He explains the situation and stops it off at a place which keeps you hungry; wanting; needing to know the final reasons. I’m a COMPLETE sucker for that method at first. If the final explanation leaves me wanting however my attention span turns away. Malcolm manages to really deliver with a good ending in just about every single one of his examples.
It very funny, but I’d never heard of Blink before I picked it up and bought it. I’d never heard of Malcolm Gladwell before Blink. I was casually walking around Fopp one Sunday (must have been a few months ago now), and the cover really grabbed me. Something about the name just clicked in my head. I read the cover very slightly, but it was only until I got into reading that I realised just how important it was to really start believing in your unconscious mind. The bloody thing works on OVERTIME and we haven’t even noticed. Or more accurately don’t tend to notice as often as we really should.
Go buy Blink, your life will be different once you’ve read it. Guaranteed.
I’ll probably do a more proper review of the latest version of Flock at some point when it’s slightly more mature, but v0.7 Beta is a good stage to look at it more seriously. Also mad props to my boy Veloso for a really nice implementation of the new Flock website, very cool.
I’ve been listening to this album more and more lately and all I can say is that it’s without a doubt the album of the year for me. I know it’s pretty early to claim such things but it would take Billy Corgan and the new pumpkins a miracle of GIGANTIUM proportions to top this album (after all they’ve already produced a 2 disc epic). I’ve been a massive peppers fan for a very long time. This album takes me back to the summer of 1999, as I was listening to ‘Californication’ and thinking it was the best album I’d heard since ‘Adore’.
Well I can definitely say that Stadium Arcadium is just as EPIC in scope as ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Saddness’! For all those that know what a massive Smashing Pumpkins fan I actually am know what this means for me to say such a thing. There is soo much great music in this album, my head is about to go on overload. Now go order your special edition box set of this epic and come back and we’ll discuss specifics :).
Arguably the most arty thing I’ve done in London in a good long while, yesterday I went to watch Kabuki dancing in Sadler’s Well in Angel. This was the last show in the tour by Ebizo Ichikawa XI. On what was probably the single most humid day of the entire year in London I was in a closed theatre with another few thousand or so people, without air conditioning, sitting next to the biggest lady in the entire audience (on one side at least, Sophia is quiet petite so there wasn’t a problem on the other side).
The word Kabuki means a lot to me as it’s the title of one of my favourite graphic novels (I’ve written the first review for this series on Splash Panel). The graphic novel effectively showed me what could be done with the graphic novel format and I’m still aspiring to craft something that I can be proud of in that genre of storytelling. So when I saw the advert for this particular show I had to see it.
I will say that Kabuki isn’t for the action/adventure types. This is a form of theatre that hasn’t much changed in over 400 years, so what it is trying to convey and the methods by which it conveys them might not really mean much for the culture of today. This is most definitely an acquired taste. It’s not like a form of music. It’s an appreciation of Japanese culture and the time in which this type of theatre came to prominence.
I for one really enjoyed it. I was taken aback by how perfect the male actors were pulling of the female roles so gracefully; fair enough they’ve been training since they were 4 years old but still it was an amazing transformation to see Ichikawa go from a woman in the play ‘The Wisteria Maiden’ to the evil samurai in ‘Kasane’. The kimono’s and the sets and the music were superb as well (but then again I loved that before I even was saw the show). The musicians seriously impressed with me with their absolute stillness when they were not involved in that particular part of the musical section.
I also learnt of a number of things about the Kabuki theatre experience that I was completely unaware of. Like the fact that members of the audience actually shout the names of the house of the actors or their number in the lineage. The fact that the story is mainly told in their actions themselves, rather than in words. Sometimes the music and the lyrics are used to tell the story leaving the actor to concentrate on the motions to tell the story. Like I said it’s an aquired taste but one that I recommend for those who like Feudal Japanese Culture and viewing storytelling in different mediums.
Last night reminded me of Greece during the summer. The humidity was absolutely ridiculous to be honest. It felt as though the walls were dripping with moisture. Usually I fall asleep within like 10 seconds of my head hitting the pillow, this was obviously not the case yesterday. Tossing and turning I remembered the days when I was in school and when I be going through the same thing since Athens during the summer is ‘mild’ 45 degrees C. Then I remembered a song by Bobby Gaylor which captured the summer I finished school in 1997 perfectly, suicide. I’ve talked about this song before so here’s the lyrics for everyone to enjoy.
Animals don’t have a choice.
If they’re not happy with their place in the world… too bad.
They have to live the life they’ve been given.
Humans, on the other hand, don’t have to.
We have a choice.
If you don’t like your place in the world, you can get off anytime you want.
Suicide. That’s right.
You don’t like the way your life’s going, you don’t like the way you are in the world, anything around you, you can check out anytime you like.
Animals aren’t allowed that thought and believe me, if they were, they would use it.
There’d be a lot of dogs and cats, owned by assholes that live in high-rises, diving out the windows.
Zebras… if they even had remotely that thought would take a look at themselves and go, “What the F*#K!”
Black & white in a green & brown world… this blows.
I’m just gonna jump in the river….
I don’t have a thumb to work a gun or hold a knife or even open a jar of pills.
I’m just gonna dive into the next lion’s mouth.
“Why even bother?”
Now, monkeys have the opposable thumb so they could kinda do it the exact same way we do.
Now, there’s a bunch of people that say, “Oh, it’s against the law”.
Well, it’s only against the law if you do a crappy job and get caught.
Other people say, “Oh, we should save them”.
Yeah, well you know what?
Not everybody wants to be saved.
Not everybody should be saved.
And who are we to force our will upon them?
I mean, isn’t that one of the joys about being a human?
Freedom of choice?
Now, it’s not all bad.
Now, I’m not saying “Kill yourself”.
But if you’re gonna be an idiot and do it anyway, it’s no sweat off of my back.
There’s a lot of good that could come from it.
A little bit of bad thrown in.
Some of the things:
A job will open…
An apartment will become available…
There’ll be more air for me…
They say there’s two girls for every guy - if you’re a man, there’ll be four chicks for me…
There’ll be more Ketel One vodka for me…
There’ll be one less idiot in line at the bank who gets up to the window without their F*#King slips filled out…
I won’t ever have to go to the store to buy my favorite Salt & Vinegar Chips and have the clerk point at you and say, “They bought the last bag”….
You won’t help change the McDonald’s sign to a Hundred Billion Served…
You’ll never get AIDS…
You won’t have to worry about calories ever…
No more, “Hey, does this make me look fat?”…
There’ll be one less polluting human…
You won’t have to recycle… There’ll be one less car on the road…
There’ll be more Ring Dings for me…
Fifty or so chickens' lives will be spared…
Your fingers won’t ever get red from eating pistachios…
You won’t be forced to visit your Grandparents on Sundays anymore…
No more church…
You’ll be saying, “Hey, World - Kiss My Ass!”…
No more wet dreams about Supermodels…
No more Barry Manilow… Not for a few years anyway…
Wondering “Am I a loser?” will be a thing of the past…
Say good-bye to crappy Xmas presents from Aunts and Uncles…
You won’t have to suffer through a Motley Crue reunion…
F*#K flossing and brushing…
You’ll never lose sleep over a pregnancy scare…
Adios, Acne…
Worrying whether you fit in or not won’t be on your brain…
See ya later, homework…
You’ll never have to sit through another movie brought to you by the creators of South Park…
School’s out forever….
No more paying bills…
You won’t have to do chores…
You won’t be able to run over toads with the lawnmower though…
You’ll also miss McDonald’s French Fries…
Bugs Bunny…
The amazing electrifying feeling that surges through your body when you kiss someone for the first time…
You won’t be able to watch the letterbox director’s cut of Jaws…
Candy…
Living above ground…
Pudding crust…
You’ll miss the rush of getting your first apartment…
Getting to the point in your life where you can tell your parents to “F*#K Off! I gotta make my own mistakes, you did”…
You’ll miss sex - you’ll miss thinking about it, looking for it, sex by yourself, sex with a partner, sex with multiple partners…
No more summer nights that seem to go on forever…
Roller coasters….
Naming your kid the name you always wanted…
Making a difference in the world…
You’ll miss the experience and pleasure of Hallucinogenics…
Watching your neighbor’s wife change clothes with her blinds open…
A lifetime of masturbating…
Watching your favorite team sweep the series…
Music, you will definitely miss music…
Trying to sneak into your house drunk - three hours past your curfew…
You’ll miss the blaze and glory of the 4th of July fireworks…
The taste of Captain Crunch…
If you’re a boy, you’ll miss the feeling the first time you reach up a girl’s shirt…
If you’re a girl, the feeling the first time you reach down a boy’s pants…
You’ll miss your favorite coat…
Waffles with whipped cream and strawberries…
Beating your friends at video games…
You won’t be around to see what shape and color the new marshmallow in Lucky Charms will be…
You’ll miss the feeling you get when reminiscing about your first love - thirty years after the fact…
The joy of giving and receiving at Christmas…
Skinny dipping…
Getting stoned, reading Green Eggs & Ham, and eating like a horse that got loose in the grain bin…
Flying cars…
Hey, you were born, finish what you started!
Yes no subject is taboo on the Kode so I’m going to talk about my haircut today. Generally speaking I really really hate going to get my hair cut. It’s like when you ask a kid to go for a bath; there’s like a million reasons that make absolutely no sense whatsoever that come between myself and that bloody haircut. Generally speaking I just honestly don’t like the experience. It’s a bane of my life that I have to go through, which to be honest I wish I didn’t have to be subjected to.
Today was different. On one of the hottest days in the year here in England I had an appointment for a 5:30 cut. I had to a wait a little while for someone to finish off and then lovely-french-girl-hairdresser-woman asks me if I want the hair wash as well. I was feeling a bit sticky so I said yeah lets go for it. I swear I wasn’t prepared for the feeling I got. She used this Tea Tree shampoo from Paul Mitchell and I’ve got to say that it was without a doubt the best feeling my head has ever been through. The freshness that this shampoo gives you is unparalleled.
I’m not really used to talking about shampoo to be honest but this stuff seriously deserves a mention. After the wash she goes:
To which I replied:
I’m now passing this information on to you, because if you’ve never used something similar to this, you’re in for a serious treat, guaranteed to give you (one of) the best shower experience you’ve ever had.
In case you missed it (because I did until very recently), Yahoo’s now got a nice Summer Movie Guide set up. The movies I’m most excited about are: Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Clerks II, Superman Returns and Over the Hedge. Should I be looking out for anything else?
I’ve been in LA for a couple of days now and I think I’m finally ready to talk about the city a bit more. The single most important aspect of LA that makes it (as far as I can tell) pretty damn unique all over the world is the lack of a coherent public transportation system (which we shall now refer to as PT). If you want to go anywhere is LA, you have to DRIVE there. I don’t think people that have not visited the city really appreciate what I mean by you have to DRIVE there, so I’ll try and elaborate and paint a picture of this as much as possible.
Imagine a place that is very wide and vast, where things are not built upwards but outwards. Now imagine that same place not having any real public transportation network. This place has several bus routes scattered around the place and a trainline that connects a couple of places (but nothing really significant). If you want to go anywhere, you have to DRIVE there, and so does everyone else. So what you get are massive highways (or freeways) sometimes spanning 8 lanes on one side providing the transport routes for the entire city. There is no other means for you to get around.
For all those people living in European cities (and I’m sure many American cities, but you probably already know this by now), I’m sure if you’re like me you use Public Transport (PT). Be it the bus system, the trams, the tubes/metro/trains etc. You probably also complain about the systems that you use when they don’t operate properly or run a bit late. Like me you’ve probably thought to yourself on those occasions, wouldn’t it be really cool if we could just DRIVE everywhere and not have to deal with all this waiting, such a waste of time. Well some FOOL thought of the same thing but instead of just getting on with life, he followed through with the idea and the city of LA was born. See the only problem is that he was so selfish that he didn’t think the other 4 million people thinking the same thing. So his answer to this problem of all these people was to build BIGGER roads.
This is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that basically what this does is completely displace the city. The city now has no backbone and you don’t really see people going about their business, all you see are cars going places. You’ll see a person on the rare occasion when he wants to get out of his car and go into a store or something like that, but in all food places that’s been taken care of with the drive through.
It’s an interesting experiment, in that it shows you what happens when there is no PT to combine the city. It disconnects the city from it’s people and all you see are cars and freeways, with vegitation in between.
I’ve already talked ever so briefly about the visit to Vegas on Monday. The first thing you notice as you enter Vegas is the fact that it’s seriously in the middle of no where. I’ve watched Bugsy, which I think ‘tells’ the Hollywood version of how Vegas started. I’m not completely completely familiar with it’s history (it only celebrated 100 years in existence last year, so it’s not all that old).
Anyway it’s the fucking desert and there are these ABSOLUTELY ridiculously lavish hotels all over the place. We were staying at the Luxor (hey it’s a pyramid in the middle of the desert. It’s got a massive light right at the top which shines light into space or something stupid like that. So we walked down the ‘strip’ and to be honest we literally only got half way down the road,…if that. See we got to Ceasar’s Palace.
I’ve visited a number of cities around the world, and been in more hotels than I can an actually remember, but I’ll remember Ceasar’s Palace. The place was absolutely ridiculous in size. It’s not one building, but something like 10 massive buildings with a small city making up the shopping centre underneath. I design the electrical systems of buildings for a living, so whenever I walk into a place, I do the geeky thing an I check what’s going on, if there’s anything new and interesting, just to keep in mind how some things have been designed for the next time I come up with a crazy question from some crazy architect (you have to be slightly insane to be an architect, some would say you have to be COMPLETELY insane to be an architect), and there was something in Caesar’s Palace that made me stop an think:
I’m sorry but how the hell do you make a curved escalator? I’m going to have to do some research on that. Anywho I’ll post that fountain video once I get back to the UK. Any decent media plugins for wordpress?
Coffee? I doubt it It’s baffled me for years as to how and why Starfucks came to this MASSIVE prominence around the world. How it came to be the Mcdonalds of coffee. How it came to be that the clusterfuck of caramel, cream and cheesecake came to dominate the world of coffee around the world. I would sit there and wonder why it was that a Starbucks was getting built in Greece and England when the competition was soo much better.
I’ve finally realised the reason. It’s very simple. In all the various different, alternative places we’ve tried coffee in, Starbucks is simply better. That isn’t to say it’s great,….not by a long shot sunny jim. It’s just that if you’re brave enough to try the other ‘coffee’ on offer, you’re bound to wish you were having a Starbucks. Can someone please explain how difficult it is for a decent cup of coffee to be brewed? I mean seriously.
Radio Stations Sorry but where the hell is the music. It seems as though for every song, you get about 15 minutes of fucking ANNOYING adverts and 5 minutes of some idiot called Joe TRYING to be funny but falling flat on his face. The real problem comes when the rental doesn’t have a CD player, and you forgot your Itrip at home. Never will I forget my itrip again.
Vegas Is Insane You’ve heard the stories and probably remember the movies, but I’m here to confirm that Las Vegas is infact an aberation of man. It’s in a place that should not be there, doing things that should not be possible. It’s completely insane, and looking fucking ridulous in the day. But come the night, that’s when Vegas comes ALIVE. I’ve got loads a video I’ll be posting which basically shows the water show infront of the Bellagio. Fucking INSANE I tell you.
Today was my brother’s graduation day. It comes 5 years after my graduation which was the last time I was in a similar situation so obviously I did start to reminisce about that day in Nottingham all those years ago. This time of course I was on the other ending of the stage so I was able to take the whole event around me with a hell of a lot more detail.
One thing I was very disappointed in was the fact that many people didn’t really dress for the occasion. Graduation is such a unique occasion. The fact of that matter is that NO ONE can take it away from you. It’s not like a wedding which as it seems more often the case ends up in divorce. This is your ticket to the world. Whether you choose to use it or not is up to you. So rather than celebrating this occasion people where wearing jeans and t-shirts, flip-flops and in many ways it took away from the specialness of the occasion. If you don’t dress up now, when exactly do you think would be a good idea?
I’m not saying everyone was dressed like a hobo but I’d venture at least 95% were. In case you were there at the spring graduation for the University of LaVerne and you were dressed as if you were going down to the beach, then I’m talking about you.
I can’t honestly remember the speaker at my graduation speech, mainly because I didn’t actually understand a word he was saying. He was Serbian/Russian with a monster thick accent, and while I did appreciate his accomplishments, his speech obviously left nothing for me. The key speaker at my brother’s graduation was a bit different, the man was Azim Khamisa, who leads the Tariq Khamisa Foundation. Go have a read on the website what it’s all about. I will say that I thought some of the descriptions where a bit heavy for a 10am graduation speech, but it was a powerful one nonetheless. Obviously a lot of it was lost on me, mainly because I guess I can’t honestly relate to serious gun crime that exists in the US, based on the second amendment. The social problems that spiral outwards because of this law have been documented by others in a much better way (mainly ‘Bowling for Columbine'), so that impact was lost on me, however it’s a great story and shows a great deal of commitment to bettering the place around you.
The doves at the end of the ceremony where a great touch, very cool indeed. I also really enjoyed the fact that each faculty had it’s own proper reception and had some decent food to chow on. In England that wouldn’t have happened (at least it didn’t happen in Nottingham, apart from a little bit of tea and buscuits, which is a pretty poor effort to be honest with you).
I remember that during that day I was seriously stressed out. My mother picked up on this fact. Today I noticed my brother in the exact same situation as me. Basically the way I explain it is that we both felt that we were responsible for our family enjoying themselves and appreciating our surroundings and effectively our worlds, at least that what we tell ourselves. The real reason for the stress is the fact that 4 years of stress ended in that one day. However other things start coming into your mind, mainly:
It’s a scary question, since up until now your life has been mapped out for you. Now it’s all up to you to make a decision. It’s up to you to forge the way forward. All I can say is that thousands have been here before, yes it’s scary, yes it’s not easy, but it’s your life and it’s time to grab it by the balls and see where this all takes you.
Update: For all those looking for the 2010 version (the one linked below is for the 2006 version), then head on over to the Excely website. http://www.excely.com/football/2010-fifa-world-cup-schedule.shtml
I generally hate football. With the odd exception of the World Cup which I’m a really big fan of. The last time, a guy at work gave me this Excel spreadsheet which I found extremely useful in keeping me abreast of what was going on. Excely have provided an updated version of their spreadsheet which is very handy. Anyone got any other cool World Cup downloads?
That was the longest trip I’ve ever made. Now it wasn’t actually boring nor was it particularly uncomfortable, it’s just that had some chinese guy sitting next to me that decided he was going to take up all the arm rests and go to sleep from the word go for like 6 hours. There was no British courtesy in any of his actions, so that annoyed me a bit.
Then we arrive into LAX. My brother had warned me that was to expect ‘special’ treatment as an Arab. In a way then I was completely calm about the situation that I found myself into. I’ve got to say that the people working there were extremely courteous however it makes you wonder exactly what the system was/is trying to achieve or prove.
So he gets my parent’s passports out of the way and then he asks me if I’ve registered before. Seeing as this is my first time in America, of course I hadn’t. So he walks me to the other end of the airport. While he’s walking the blue line (seriously it was a blue line on the ground with arrows), he gets asked by the people there:
To which they gave a little laugh at, of course I understood that my time in LAX airport was about to be extended somewhat. An hour of waiting later I had been through the process, which involves filling out a form (which I’d already filled out for my visa application form, so I don’t know what the real reason behind this actually was). They had my finger prints and photo both taken in the embassy and on my visa itself, so it just makes me wonder why I had to go through that. Luckily I wasn’t completely alone, as I’m sitting there and I’ll generally speaking, talk to anyone. I get to talking with the guy sitting right opposite me, turns out it’s Said who’s got Iranian roots. We sat there dicussing ‘war’ stories of how we’ve been treated in airports throughout our lives. It was very funny, because everyone was really serious around us, pissed off at being there and here were these two idiots laughing their asses off.
So we get out of LAX finally and onto the highway, aka the freeway. It’s an interesting concept. The massive roads go through the cities at high level. You get off at various junctions and travel DOWN to get to different residential areas, with mainly fast food places and petrol stations.
We pulled into one of those where I had a cream cheese and butter bagel, thus came my first taste of America.
Damn time flies by. I’m off to the States tomorrow for my brother’s graduation (an event we all wondered if would actually ever come to pass). I’ve got to say that in general the visa application system was relatively painless with the exception of the courier service which honestly sucks some major balls. However the tickets have been confirmed, the passport is prepped and ready, the bag is no where near being full (hell I’ve not even bothered taking it out of the closet yet), so now it’s just a matter of getting all my reading, writing and drawing materials in order for the long flight.
Completely manic time at work today. It’s weeks like this that really make me hate the job. Pressure to get your ‘house’ in order, emails flying, I swear I must have looked COMPLETELY miserable this week, since soo many people kept telling me to cheer up but hey there was nothing I could cheer about, as this trip just wasn’t really factoring in my thoughts, only how much stuff I could get through that was on my plate.
I don’t know why I’m not as excited about this trip as I should be, I’m in more need of a proper holiday than I’ve ever been in recent years, maybe it’s the fact that life at work hasn’t been exemplary lately? It’s strange I’m very good at cutting off work life from my life outside, however sometimes it’s extremely difficult to disassociate those two areas, sometimes they fuse together and lead into each other.
The next post will probably be on the other side of the pond, with a few photographs of weird stuff I encounter along the way. I fully intend to use my camera to it’s fullest extent throughout this visit.
So I met up with Chris and co on Friday. What’s cool about Chris is that he’s one of the few remaining friends of mine that is a TOTAL and UBER geek. He’s not only a geek, but he’s pretty damn proud of it. Damn right as well. The way you should be. Wear your geekiness on your sleeve. Anyway he turns around to me and tells me:
Completely BLANK face from me.
This kinda disappointed him for like 2 seconds as he LAUNCHED into this massive rant about how SHIT the Sony PS3 presentation looked and how on the ball Nintendo seemed to be with the Wii. So here’s a few movies I was able to grab off Youtube for those interested in what all the fuss was about (it’s apparently the future of gaming, which to be honest I can actually see). The closest approximation I can come up with is a movie with an exceptional story. The audience will seriously forgive a lot of things (like slightly dodgy acting or whatever). Substitute story with GAMEPLAY. It’s an interesting concept no :).
After he was done going on about the Wii he then looked at me again and said:
Once again I disappointed him to inform him that in fact I didn’t. He claims it’s the best thing since sliced cheese and that it’s easily the most playable console he’s ever had. I’ve always been a Sega boy to be honest. Nintendo always seemed too Vanilla for my liking to be honest. When Sega died, Sony seemed like a good extention of that market ethic. Then Sony showed it’s PSP, to Nintendo’s DS, which looks like crap right? Nothing on the PSP right?
Apparently I’m completely off base here; It’s not about the looks, the gameplay is the real focus for this system. Nintendo seem to have seen the errors of their way with that as well which is why they’ve released the DS lite, which is smaller, lighter and slightly more stylish, thus addressing my FUGLY comment about the original DS.
See what’s interesting is that I’m not a gamer at all and yet this push Nintendo are doing is actually pushing the right buttons for me, so they must be doing something correctly right?
Been meaning to write a proper review about this book for a good long while. Due to many commitments it’s not been possible to really get into the book until now. “Blog Design Solutions” is a book that was released earlier this year (from Friends Of Ed) and was written by 8 guys from around the world; you might recognise a couple of the wee rascles, Chris J Davis, Michael Heilemann, John Oxton, Andy Budd and several others (I appologise I’m not terribly familiar with their work/sites but I’m definitely going to check them out from now on). The common link between these gents is that they’re all bloggers. The difference is that they use different software to run their sites.
There are numerous sites around the place that highlight the differences between the major blogging software packages available to run your blog sites on. What this book does is give a taster, a morsel, a sampler of the major ones. The book is seperated into 7 Chapters. The first two chapters cover general information about blogging and the world of blogging. While the second chapter tackles how to set things up to test and run a blog on you machine locally. It’s a nice reference guide to have to be honest. I personnally use XAMMP, but it would be good at some point when I’ve got a bit more time to set things up in a less lazy manner :).
The next 5 chapters are where things get interesting. Each chapter addresses the ins and outs of a particular blogging engine. Movable Type, WordPress, Expression Engine, TextPattern are all covered. The final chapter is very interesting because it tackles the subject of building your own blogging engine from scratch and how you go about it.
Movable Type is covered (including the history that Mena probably tends to like to forget, ie when MT3.0 was released and there was this massive jump away from the MT solution to the WordPress solution). I was intrigued to read this chapter because honestly I think to myself what the hell is the point of using MT? It seems to me like it’s lagging behind most of the other internet blogging solutions? The answer to two fold I guess. Part of it is the fact that it’s pretty old (in internet terms) and has a loyal base of users; in addition to that it’s also the fact that there is a core base of developers that are accountable to you if in case you want something done, or sorted out. Some users want that level of support, especially if we’re talking about commercial corporate users of some description.
The WordPress chapter is special to me, because it’s the WordPress chapter (in case you didn’t realise the ‘Kode currently runs on WordPress) but more importantly it was written by my two buddies Michael and Chris, so obviously I’ll be paying more attention to this chapter than the rest of the book (hey at least I’m honest about these things). So how did the boys do? Not too bad. What’s great about this particular chapter is that their characters come throughout the entire chapter. Blogging is about interating and reading other people’s thoughts. It’s about communication and expression. They’re the only guys that spend a bit of time telling you about themselves and what their knowledge levels are. It’s a great way to ease the user into a comfort zone. Michael (at the time) was still struggling with php (no problems now I’m sure as he’s decided to take on JS as well), to prove that you didn’t need to know PHP coding in order to design and play around with WP, all you need is the drive, patience and some time.
I’ve got to admit though that the most interesting chapter for me was the final chapter by Richard Rutter. Which walks you through the process of making your own blogging engine. Why is that interesting to me when someone else has already done most (if not all the hard work for me). To be honest it would just be fun to have everything running on something I designed and coded. The thing of course is that I’m not a coder and therefore won’t realistically be able to do something like that. Also the first thing that comes to my mind is how I don’t think I’d be able to deal with Spammers. I can’t do without Akismet to be honest and I don’t understand how other people can manage without this plugin.
The book targets 2 groups of people, those that want to start off blogging and what they’ll need to know; the second group of people are those that have passed that stage and would like to learn how to customising their blogs, and what to look out for. I don’t think I’m really the core target audience, but even I found several nuggets that were really worthwhile. It’s definitely a book I’d recommend giving to the newbie who’s interested but is also a bit overwhelmed by it all, because this book holds his hand in style. For the hardened blogger the book is interesting as an overview of other technologies so as to keep abreast of what’s going on, with a couple of areas that are definitely of interest, but then again that’s not who the book is targeted at, so it’s nice that the editor made sure there was something for that group of people as well.
Seriously one of the best adverts I’ve seen on TV in a good long while. The advert was aparently done by Mother (does anyone have a link for this ad agency, definitely one to look out for).
I’m going to ramble on a bit more about Shuttle, simply because it’s been a pretty big part of my life the last year and loads of things I’ve wanted to talk about on this blog have been waiting for this moment in time. Everytime I would think about something cool to talk about relating this project I always had to keep on the mental shelf until after I got to this stage.
People expected the second coming for some reason. The simple thinking behind joining forces with the likes of Michael, Joen, Chris, Bryan and Joshuas was that by joining forces with these exceptionally talented people, at the top of their game, we would get something that would far exceed anything I could have come up with on my own. Make no mistake about it, without everyone’s contribution we wouldn’t have the mockups you see before you. They would be INFINITELY different and IMHO much weaker.
The problem however with this situation is that INSTANTLY people’s expectations were raised. Some people were expecting the second coming and didn’t get it. To be fair though we never promised you the second coming. We promised we’d do our best to make the WordPress admin beautiful and usable to people of all levels of experience with the programme. Some might forget that we’re not catering just to the power users; we’re catering to the every users. That’s a tough thing to do correctly, and that’s part of why it took as long as it did… but only a small part.
Of course then there are those that feel that the admin didn’t really need to change at all. I obviously disagree with this assessment COMPLETELY, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone down this road in the first place. However this is a VERY important comment to take note of. You see change is feared by a great deal of people. In fact that’s probably (amongst many other reasons) by Matt will be implementing the design incrementally. WordPress got to it’s current popularity based on the fact that the software does what it does, well. Add to that list the community behind it; and finally the simplicity of the UI design.
The Shuttle team obviously saw room for improvement as we belive it’s not the prettiest to look at. Some might then argue and say:
That there is a programmer’s mentality, not a designer’s. So right from the very start (I remember clearly) Joen tried to push the idea that the overall structure that the interface currently has is not incorrect fundamentally and therefore we shouldn’t be looking to change that just for the sake of it. Michael then kept hammering the ideas (through his comps) that if it’s not needed STRIP IT OUT, keep it simple, keep it clean, keep it clear. On the flip side we had Matt telling us some seriously weird things you guys do when using WordPress so we had to factor a bit of that weirdness in there as well. However don’t try and deviate from what has been established as a core unless there’s a serious reason. Those reasons would then get hammered back and forth, between Denmark, England and the US on a regular basis.
For those that are thinking that this is just a design exercise and won’t get included fast enough, I think you’ll find that if you’re running WordPress 2.0 the integration of Shuttle has already begun! What you think Matt woke up one morning and decided to add the colour blue from the previous grey? Or that those drop-down-draggable menus in the write section appeared on their own? All things that came about from the Shuttle project. Admittedly they’re not as we mocked them up at the time, however we hadn’t progressed to the level we are now at the time those areas were being implemented in the code. I now officially feel like Morpheus in the Matrix after Neo gets his ass whupped in Kung Fu.
Many lessons were learnt during this design process however we’ll keep it at this for now.
To avoid any confusion and answer some questions that have been raised I’ve created this small FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) to dispell any rumours and set the record as straight as I possibly can. If you’ve got any questions put them underneath and I’ll update the post accordingly.
However after much back and forth it was decided that this design would be better implemented as part of the core WP install. In many ways it was also impossible to implement this design in any way apart from altering the core code, so a plugin was not an option.
If Matt needs any help or wants some clarity on how certain parts of the design should work the Shuttle team is ready and waiting.
Before you read this I suggest you go and have a look at the 20 mockups showing the future of WordPress.
The idea of redesigning the WordPress administration panel began believe it or not in December 2004. For over a year and a half myself, Michael Heilemann, Joen Asmussen, Chris J Davis, Joshua Sigar (later joined by Bryan Veloso) exchanged countless emails and mockups and links and ideas regarding what we thought the WordPress administration panel should be. The project was called the Shuttle Project. I now have the pleasure of presenting what we came up with and explaining the future of the project.
The Shuttle project was without a doubt the single hardest thing I’ve ever been involved with. The only thing that made it easy for me was the fine and exceptional gentlemen on the Shuttle team itself. What made it so difficult is the fact that we were thinking of the thousands of WordPress users all over the world. We were thinking of usability, we were thinking of asthetics, we were thinking of the power user and the novice user. How do you get three headstrong (and passionate) designers to play nice with each other? I swear I have no idea but somehow it all actually worked out in the end. I owe Michael and Joen a great deal of thanks for helping me improve how I think about design.
However the greatest thing that I could have gotten from this project is the sense of collaboration that I felt throughout the project. We were all working towards making something we use on a daily basis that much better, it makes Open Source that much more enjoyable. Although it was tough going through this design process, I think we’ll all instantly forget everything once it’s part of the official install.
I can’t wait for the Shuttle designs to be incorporated into the WordPress install, as I do believe that once it’s done there will be only one choice in which platform you should be using.
So the first major change we made was give WordPress a colour and it’s own distinct identity. We had to make sure that it didn’t mimic any of the other blogging tools out there, so we did a bit of research first. Textpattern has orange, Symphony is green, Moveable Type is grey/green, Expresion Engine is purple. We decided to go for blue. What does blue signify you ask? An easy link (and direct from Wikipedia) is that the colour blue:
That was what I was hoping we’d get. The colour palette provides an atmosphere that is familiar and not harsh on the eyes. Seeing as a lot of people spend a great deal of time looking at the actual backend of WordPress a great deal throughout the day, it was very important to keep the visual impact of the administration panel to a minimum.
After a great deal of back and forth and loads of mockups and discussion the number of hues of blue was kept to a total of 3. These same blues would be used to distinguish links within the panel itself, as consistency is a major factor in keeping the user comfortable.
Join me next time as I talk a bit about usability (or at least try and talk about the subject).
And everything in this world just became THAT much better. I actually have a Smashing Pumpkins project I’ve been meaning to deal with for the past 6 years, hopefully I should get round to it before the latest album comes out. Exciting times.
The first season of easily one of the funniest and best series on TV in a good long while came to an end this week. Thankfully it has been renewed for a full second season, so there’s more Earl to come, which is brilliant news.
If you’re not sure what the hell I’m talking about, grab a seat and let’s talk Jason Lee. Without a doubt the greatest asset to all of Kevin Smith’s movies was bringing Jason Lee’s awesome talent to the screen. Easily one of my favourite actors; I generally don’t follow actors as it’s very hit and miss with the kind of roles they choose and the movies they participate in. Jason Lee however is golden in all the appearances he’s ever made (Chasing Amy, Mallrats, Dogma, Almost Famous), so I was very excited about his own TV series.
What’s great about this series is the quality of everyone involved. Even though Earl is a great character, the supporting cast around him make his role that much simpler. Without a doubt my favourite character is Crabman. I want a friend like Crabman. Always looking out for you and has a soft spot for cheese. His brother Randy is easily Ethan Suplee’s best role to date. He’s not had many that I can remember to be honest, but he plays the hapless brother in an extremely great way.
My only complaint would be that the show didn’t really give Catalina a great deal of time; we saw Joy a lot more, which isn’t a bad thing, but I would have much preferred some more airtime for Catalina. If you’ve not given this series a shot, definitely watch it because it’s one of the few feel good shows on the tube right now. It’s easy light watching, that will completely take you away for 20 minutes. It’s not meant to be the smartest series ever made and there are times when it does fall flat, but when it’s on fire, nothing can beat it.
I’ve never actually researched the idea at all and therefore know seriously little to nothing about this concept. I don’t know how I got to think about this today, but I was sitting there on the tube and I got thinking (there’s little to do on the tube). The reason I started thinking about this was general attributes I’ve started noticing in different people. I notice a number of things that go on around me (in detail that is), it’s part of my nature.
Currently the thing that has been striking a cord with me is how some people act or dress that doesn’t coincide with their age. Some might look in their mid-30s and act as though they we’re 15 years old…on a number of occasions, or they’ll be 20-something and be ready to settle down and have some kids. Or others will be 40 somethings and act as if they’re 70 years old.
So I got to thinking, your life is a massive cycle that is played across several 100s of years and it takes you a good long while to move onto the next stage. So you could be stuck in the 5-10 year old stage for several lifetimes. Subconsiously your brain is telling you that you’re the physical age you’ve grown to in this part of the cycle; you haven’t passed that age yet, so you act in a specific way. There are certain phases of your life which are unfinished. You’re not ready to leave or you haven’t experienced to the fullest of your ability. So you stay, mentally stuck in that part of the cycle.
This then triggered another memory, more specifically a memory of a thought I used to have when I was younger. I used to look at mid to 20 year olds and think to myself, that’s a really cool age to be in. Those are the best years of your life; not the most carefree, but definitely the best years. I couldn’t wait to reach that age. So I guess I’m still stuck in that age group.
Like I said I have NO idea about reincarnation and the ideas behind it, however I see certain things that make me wonder about it every once in a while.
Just wanted to thank the guys and gals over at Web Creme, CSS Vault, CSS Remix, Adam (of CSSReboot fame) and Olav, for featuring the ‘kode in their galleries and lists, much appreciated. If you’re new to the Kode, please have a look around the site is constantly changing as I’m still trying to pull it all together.
The real reason why I decided to reboot to something more simple this time round hopefully is becoming more obvious with the latest change in the background on the front page. As the section implies the background (which occupies the most real estate on the site) will be used to throw the spotlight on specific projects and completed artwork. Version 4 isn’t all that different (at least in structure) to what I have now, however it’s been adapted in such a way to allow me to play around more freely.
This week I’m throwing the spotlight on a little open source project I got involved with a couple of months ago. It’s an online feed aggregator and it’s allowed me to actually get up to speed and READ all the various sites that I’ve subscribed to. Traditionally most of my feeds were read from the Sage extension for Firefox, however I needed something a little bit more powerful FOFRedux provided me with what I was looking for.
The FOFR dev team is a great bunch of people. It’s a tight nit community of devs and users as the programme itself isn’t as widely used as it really deserves to be, however we’re hoping to change that with a number of great additions to the software. The major element being a complete overhaul of the UI admin section as you can see from the project page.
Anywho if you’re looking for an online open source aggregator that sits on your server, then you don’t have to look further. It’s still early days (version 0.3 was released a couple of weeks ago) but I have very high hopes for the software. Final word, I’m planning on spending a lot more time cleaning up my projects area over the coming weeks as I’ve got a great number of announcements to be making. Sometime over the weekend I should have some pretty exciting news about Shuttle to share with everyone and a page that mimics the FOFRedux page (it’s a lot bigger because I’ve got to upload over 29 images).
Go buy the DVD version of an open-source movie? Open source as in you’ve got full access to all the elements that went into making the movie. I know sounds completely crazy but very cool at the same time. I’ve been waiting for this for a good long while, ever since I heard about it all those moons ago. If you’ve not tried Blender and want to try your hand at 3d modelling, you really don’t have very far to travel, and nothing to pay for your visit either.
I hate Mondays. Every Monday that comes around I always remember that episode of Garfield where he’s trying to get away from Monday so he books a ticket to fly to another country to get away from that dreaded day. That’s how much I hate Mondays. So I wake up this morning and I’m greeted by a gray sky that decided to HAMMER it down with rain the second I got out of the house. Nice. Several train problems and it’s proving to be a miserable start to the day.
That all changed the second I got my station and I got off along with a mother and her 2 or 3 year old daughter in a pram. We both arrive at the stairs at the same time so I offer to help her up the stairs, for which she thanks me and accepts my offer.
The second we get to the top of the stairs the little girl started blowing me kisses and that was me, I nearly melted then and there. I’ve seen a lot of sweet things but that was arguably the single most adorable thing I’ve seen in a good long while and suddenly Monday wasn’t so bad any more.
I wish all Mondays started off like that, maybe I wouldn’t hate them as much.
Guy Howard emailed me on Tuesday asking me whether or not I wanted a free LG Chocolate phone to test out. So off I went to see what this promotion was all about.
From the site itself:
Hence this programme. The premise is simple:
I can sum it up very simply. I’m a complete whore. Free shit? Hell I’ll take 2.
Now bare in mind that I recently went through a pretty painful experience to try and find the phone and package of choice for me. I will say that I’ve pretty much got it wrong on the package that I chose and I’ll be changing that very very shortly. The phone I have though in my mind was the best on the market. Sony seemed to have got it right this time. So how has does the LG Chocolate compare to what I considered a pretty damn solid phone, in fact the most solid phone IMHO to date?
The packaging The first thing I noticed of course was the AMAZING packaging. LG have seriously given this some thought and it really shows. Traditionally mobile phone boxes come in these ugly square things plastered with stickers. The box is more like a showcase rather than anything else. It’s a slender black rectangle that closes with a magnetic flap. Opening it up reveals a red back with just the LG logo on it and then the phone sits nicely in the middle with two compartments on either side where all the accessories are housed. If you’re reading this going why the hell is he telling us about the box; I’m telling you about the box because it’s bloody important (and yes I was the kid that used to throw away the toy and go mental with the actual box…I still do that). I opened this at work and was ranting and raving at how cool this box looked, Tim on the other side of the partition asked me if it’s a better box than the ipod, which it really is.
The Innovation It’s one of those phones that does provide a glimse of the future and provides some innovative steps in mobile phone design. I’m specifically talking about the touch sensetive pad at the bottom of the phone. When it’s closed you don’t see anything but a smooth shiney surface. Once you’ve opened it however you get the buttons glowing red from behind and they’re not actually buttons. So the problems seen on the Sony any many other phones is gone. Give if a few years and most phones will have this technology employed as standard.
The good Apart from the elements above I’ll say that I was very impressed with the earphone system they’ve decided to employ. While Sony have decided to have a special sony input for the earphones, with a completely seperate accessory to enable you to use a normal earphone jack, LG have enabled this feature from the start which is just good forethought in my eyes. And the remote controller is also very cool as well.
The bad It’s about the details for me. For some strange reason in an attempt to make everything slick and seamless many electronics manufacturers seem to skimp on a very basic element of product design. I’m specifically talking about flaps. Flaps are notoriously badly designed it makes me wonder how all these different manufacturers get it wrong across the board. The most specific example that comes to my mind is my recent purchase of my Kodak digi camera (yeah I haven’t really talked about this because I’ve not really used it extensively but my trip to America should remedy that situation). The flap that opens up for the memory card is this flimsy piece of metal that gets pulled back and is held onto the phone by two very thin bits of plastic. It’s basically asking to be broken in the future.
The second thing that’s not all that hot is the phone. It’s only 1.3 megapixels, so it’s back to the grainy photos of old. See I was getting used to my 2 megapixel camera on the Sony and so I don’t expect to go back in this department. But as Tracey rightly pointed out, you never do anything with the photos on your phone, this is very true of the average user…I’m a bit weird and different like that. I tend to take loads of snappy snaps of things that inspire me that I can draw or more importantly I can use in my drawings, so the reduction in definition of the camera is a bit annoying. Guess I’m going to have to start carrying my normal camera some more from now on.
It’s pretty obvious based on this promotion and other things that LG are pretty proud of the phone they’ve come up with here. They’ve definitely taken a page from Apple and tried to simplify things as much as possible and get clever product designers on board.
I noticed this guy wearing this t-shirt yesterday and I actually remembered the url. It’s definitely something I agree with. Traditionally over here in the UK, 4x4s look as out of place as bloody hummies. Completely unnecessary, as far as I can tell used mainly by mothers to take their kids to school (it’s a running joke).
Just finished watching the latest trailer for the Superman Returns movie and I’ve got to say that Bryan Singer seems to have HIT the nail on the head. He’s actually made this character seem like a great deal of fun. There’s a certain optimism in the entire trailer and the fact that the characters are playing off the actual stereotypes is something that comes across incredibly well. Then again you’d need some pretty stellar actors to pull it off well, and I can think of no one else that does it better than Kevin Spacey. His line at the end of that trailer is priceless. Can’t wait for this….and I’m not even a Superman fan (with the odd story as an exception).
Might be old news (since I remember this being ‘released’ by google a couple of months ago), however I couldn’t find the free version of the software. I’ll give it a review once I’ve actually used it properly.
Looking at my archives April was the slowest month of blogging since I began over 2 years ago. 10 posts the entire month. Now I’m generally not for one regarding quantity as something I heed much as I blog whenever I feel like it. The curious thing about the whole situation is the fact that I didn’t feel like writing anything apart from those 10 times during the entire month.
Spring in England is the best time of the year. There’s that promise of good weather and a small cold bite in the air. The trees are changing and the flowers are blossoming, everywhere you look around you there’s a feeling of rebirth and restart. New Year’s day should most definitely NOT be held during the darkest, most depressing time of the year, it should be during the spring. The first days of spring signals new and fresh ideas and in many cases a much needed invigoration of everyone’s outlook on the year ahead.
Updates on the ‘Kode So the machine that is Broken Kode is slowly getting to where it’s meant to be. I’ve just put up the portfolio section along with cleaning up the shop area as well, both areas promise much more to come, but it’s just good to have these areas completed after a fashion. The mantra remains to keep things as simple and robust as possible that way all future changes will be done in a controlled manner than the usual ad hoc manner I’ve become accustomed to.
CSS Reboot Talking to Bryan yesterday, it’s amazing how this particular reboot is one of the best ones I can remember in a good long while. It’s a great time for feeding on the immense amount of creativity filling the internet landscape right now. Go and be inspired.
James Jean explains the process behind the new cover work for Calexico’s latest album. I’ve really got to stop visiting that guy’s site, it depresses me too much how much talent that guy has.
Nintendo seem to have rebranded their upcoming 3rd generation, what was to be called Revolution is now called Wii (pronounced as ‘we’). Not sure what to make of it all, but what I do like the little animation they’ve got going, reminds me of the work by TokyoPlastic. Also I’m going to say that out of all the 3rd generation consoles (XBox 360 and the PS3), Nintendo have seriously outclassed their competition in terms of asthetic design, by far.
Brilliant video of a remixed George Dubayou singing John Lennon’s Imagine. I love the clip of him trying to get into a door and they both locked, the face of utter dismay is unbelievable. A constant reminder to people like myself who are still baffled by the fact that he was ‘elected’ not once but twice (yeah like I’ll ever let that one go).
(via pixelsurgeon)
A very strange thing happened during the design of this particular iteration of the ‘kode. Usually speaking I’ll be thinking about if for months, then I’ll see something on the internet and get depressed because I can never get that good and then I’ll begrudgingly try and plow through coding I really have no right playing around with in the first place, simply because if I can, I will be making a dog’s dinner out of it.
The Fairground So when I first jumped into the redesign something like 20 odd days ago I had it in my head that I was planning on making the most insane, loudest fucking thing on the internet (ok a bit of hyperbole there but that’s what was going through my head). The louder (and I mean in terms of colour and typography) the better. I was going to have loads of links everywhere. I was going to draw every single section of the damn thing, to hell with how long it was going to take people to load the site, that’s why you’ve got broadband I tried convincing myself.
As I plowed through the design, spending hours simply staring at what I had in front of me, in an attempt to make it more coherent, make it more explosive, make it more loud, I let it rest for a few hours and went and played basketball. When I got back it was as if I understood that I was going down the completely wrong road for this design. For some reason simplicity and ease of upgrading and actually understanding all the code that I was slapping down became far more important to me. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t even 40% finished with this design, it didn’t matter that I’d spent days on the design either, what matters was the Euerka moment that I felt there and then.
The Showcase It dawned upon me (yeah I know it took a fucking long while, after 8 months) that what people associated and liked about the previous site wasn’t the design or the typography, the thing that made it stand out was my artwork. Sadly because I’m too busy not happy completely with my site I don’t get the chance to draw more. This redesign is aimed at that idea, getting to draw more. I will say that the turning point was the showcase idea. Here I could use the entire page as my canvas. I could highlight everything I wanted to highlight right on the front page with the minimum amount of effort. I just change a jpg and edit a single file if I’m feeling inclined to add more information about the artwork behind.
The design The design itself is not a million miles away from most blog website out there. The real difference here is that I’m playing the grid as precicely as I can. All I could think about was maintaining a grid throughout the entire design, luckily for me it was a super simple design so there wasn’t much to worry about, but it’s all in the details.
I’ve kept my philosophy for the archives as well. Keep it simple. I completely understand all the code that is behind the functions found here and can easily manipulate them to do with as I please; which is once again a supremely inviting reason to have a super simple website. Traditionally in the past I would have been running out of steam by the time I got around to dealing with the archives, so this was a breathe of fresh air to actually want to make something of the archives both visually and from a usability point of view. I’ve not completed the work there, as I’ve still got the tags page and the categories pages to deal with as well (however those shouldn’t be too far behind).
Updating I’m intrinsically lazy when it comes to up updating the site with tweaks here and there. The reason behind once again is the messy code. The code that at the time I thought was pretty tight was in fact a bit of a mess. The design depended on plugins far too much and I can’t say that it was adding that much to the usability of the site itself. With that thought in mind, I attacked this design by stripping everything. Anything that was getting in the way was gone. Simple was the way forward. So on the front page all you get are the posts, the titles and how many comments have been made to each post. If you want any other information you’re going to have to jump back into the individual page and get that information. The entire idea behind this design is to add a bit of class to the site, which I believe although had some good intentions was lacking a coherent structure, and the attention to detail was sadly lacking. This design aims to address this problems by making the maintenance slightly more manageable.
WordPress on Fire I’ve been using WordPress for a good long while now and I’ve got to say with the sheer amount of work that’s been done out there by 1000s of people, there is nothing that you can think of that someone hasn’t thought of before (unless you’re Michael, don’t know where he mines his ideas from). What’s also great is that the resources out there to help you sift through everything is astounding. It’s actually my favourite toy at the moment because it really delivers everything I want and in the way I want it with the minimum amount of fuss. So I bow down to Matt and the entire WordPress dev team and especially to the 1000s of people that make up the WordPress Community, you guys rock.
No CoCo? Don’t be silly, he’ll be back and pretty soon, once we get this CSS Reboot malarkey over and done with then we can move on to concentrating on sketches and whatnot. I’ve got some pretty exciting stuff coming up for CoCo, so don’t you worry, he’ll be back.
Special shout out Usually when I start a redesign I pick up Manji or Rin and start hacking away. Certain things are ready for me, however looking at the code found in there, I’ve got to say that a lot of work is really needed to bring that theme up to speed with the rest of the themes out there, except I know if I jump back into that field it will really take a long time/ Thankfully there’s Fauna. Fauna by Joen IMHO should become the WordPress default. Why? Because it’s supremely easy to understand and Joen has seriously made it clever. The most time consuming part of making a theme for WordPress I found was sorting out the single post pages, with all the comments and the comment forms and the implemenation for the trackbacks etc. It just gets a bit ridiculous. So Joen’s efforts have been supremely amazing to have and while the last time round he helped me out with the code, this time he did one better and gave me his site :).
I want to also give a shout out to all the fine folks at 9rules who will always help out whenever they can which is brilliant and for the loads of inspiration they give me each and every month and to everyone who helped me whether they knew it or not, so people like Phu, Joen, Shawn, Michael, Kyle, Podz and the list goes on to be honest.
Final Word Is the site complete? No, it never is. Ask anyone out there when they think they’re site is 100% complete or if it’s perfect and I doubt they’ll say it ever is. Just because there’s always something you can do. I’ve learnt to understand that point (once again it’s taken a bit of time) but it’s all part of learning and at least now I can say I’ve laid down some decent Foundations (which also is the name of this particular design).
Sorry to all the Rin and Manji board users for the spamming that’s going on. I think I’ve rectified the situation and now I’m going back and sifting through the sheer amount of spam comments. Punbb isn’t as easy to moderate comments as WordPress is so it’s taking some time and is a little bit more time consuming. Are people still interested in having the forum, do you guys find it as a useful resource? I know loads of questions have been answered (not by me James has got a lot of thanks going his way for his contribution) however I don’t visit there often enough as I’m slightly swamped with other things right now.
To be honest I’ve had nothing but trouble whenever I have a forum (has been hacked into several times), caused me to loose data another time. If you find it useful please do tell me because I’ve seriously got a mind to just bring it down, unless someone can tell me of a decent alternative that’s relatively secure, easy to update, manage and skin.
Ok I’m officially in love. Claire Wendling (the site is in French, so now you know where she’s from as well) is the most amazing artist I’ve seen in a bloody good long while. I’ve got two of her art books here in front of me and each page oozes with inspiration. In many ways the woman was born to depress the shit out of me, because she’s that bloody good at what she does.
I bought her smaller book Iguana Bay 2.0 around a year ago or something, however what I didn’t expect was her latest offering (it’s not even on her site yet), Drawers 2.0 is an amazing collection of drawings and illustrations from an artist at the top of her game. I seriously recommend you go out and buy this book if you’re into Don Bluth type of artwork mixed in with a serious chic french BD stylings. She uses several mediums to bring her vision to life, using just pencils, going a bit more dark with simple ink brush work. Her painted work is exceptional as well, however in my eyes her most sublime artwork are the ones that are coloured in photoshop with flat colours. It gives this animated look that is absolutely stunning. While Disney has decided to go all 3D, I think it shows a distinct lack of vision on their part. 2d animation is not dead, and the likes of Miyazaki show this off again and again. Wendling shows what can be achieved as Drawers 2.0 shows a number of animation sketch stills for an animated series called Ozma that is not going to get made, which is a shame, I’d have bought it in a second.
Both these books (not sure about her other publications to be honest) are from publishing house Le Cycliste (shocking site, easily one of the worst I’ve seen for a proper publisher in a good long while) and are hardcover books. The paper is nice and thick and even though the binding is the stitch type (which is the more expensive type) I don’t think they got that aspect as well as they could have.
In any case for anyone looking to be inspired, Claire Wendling is your woman as she’ll take you to places you couldn’t have imagined yourself.
Just got this album and it’s definitely going to be making it on my best of 2006 list. I know it’s pretty early to be saying stuff like this, but I’ve got a very soft spot for Placebo as they really made some brilliant music in the lulls between Smashing Pumpkin albums during the 90s.
The really nice thing about this album is that they’ve bought a few friends along for the ride, notably of course is Michael Stipe, whom I rate a great deal. I’ve been hearing a lot of people say they’re bored of REM, which I think is a terrible shame as that’s another band that has seriously given me HOURS of great music and inspired me greatly. So what happens when you mix these distinctly different voices together? I will say that it’s very weird sensation as Stipe is a lot more softer voice than Brian Molko and you definitely feel the jar when Brian’s part kicks in, however it’s a great little tune (‘Broken Promise’ is the name of the track, might make it as the theme of my site lol).
However funnily enough my favourite tune at the moment is the final song, which is aptly called ‘A song to say goodbye’. As is always the case the first song you fall in love with on an album is usually the one that you can’t hear anymore because you’ve literally KILLED the track by playing it again and again and I assure you this is one of those situations.
It’s funny but I’ve been on a music buying binge right now. When I was in Greece I went to my favourite store (Metropolis) and they had this insane offer on the music there, 6.50 euros on 100s of albums. I did go a bit ape shit and O.Ded on Ben Harper and A Perfect Circle. Lots of great music coming out in the coming months, notably a new Pearl Jam album which I’m pretty excited about.
Well I just recorded my first ever podcast. It’s pretty raw, no bells, no whistles, I’m still trying to learn how to use Audacity and I’m getting to grips with my microphone, apologies for the sound quality, I’m working on a couple of things that will help me make it is a bit better, so hopefully you’ll definitely see a distinct difference between this one and future podcasts.
Erm, don’t take everything to heart, I talk a lot of shit as you’re going to find out. Topics I cover are enhanced podcasting, Shuttle, I have a little bit of a rant on Apple and generally make a tit out of myself. So come join the fun.
You can download the podcast from here, or if you prefer the rss feed is here.
I was meaning to write about this last week but I got caught up in other things and once again missed reviewing this movie. It’s not a new movie, however it holds a special place with me as it’s my feel good movie. It’s the movie I watch on a Sunday when I’m slightly depressed “…that it is a Sunday and that Monday’s UGLY UGLY head is slowly poking out of the infested mutant pipe that spawned it”. In case you didn’t catch that I really hate Mondays.
It’s the story of Amelie and if you’re a guy by the end of the movie you’ll be wishing you find yourself a French lady just like her (movie is in French and set in Paris). Every part of this movie screams class. From the opening titles that show a little Amelie doing things that children do to amuse themselves. This is then followed by a lightning fast narrative that picks up random occurances of life, until we reach the birth of our title lady Amelie Poulain.
The casting of little Amelie is incredible and the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet doesn’t fall into the trap of letting his children stars actually talk. I’ll try and elaborate on this a little bit. One of the things that is a big no-no in Hollywood because it generally spells the death of that movie commercially (and most cases critically as well) is using animals as the driving stars or children (there are of course the rare occasions where it all works in a magical way; Sixth Sense comes to mind, but that was an incredibly unique movie anyway). Little Amelie acts the role, but by not speaking and letting her eyes and actions speak we get a lot more convincing performance. It’s a subtle trick and I doubt it would work on me again but because it’s done so well in this movie I love it.
The entire setup is the fact that Amelie was not getting the attention she craved from her father. So much so that the only time he would have any physical contact with her is when he was giving her monthly physical check. This act would get her excited that her heart would beat so hard giving her father the impression she had a heart condition. Thus she was taught at home and made her both odd and closed to the outside world.
The movie follows her life from birth till the present moment as she struggles to find a purpose in life. At the same moment it touches the lives of many people around her. What’s very fun is just how inventive her sense of justice is and how she would go about making sure that justice is served.
One of the most amazing things in this movie is the use of colours. For me at least it set the standard with regards to rendering colours for a film. In fact the only other movie I can think of that comes close to the level of attention to the colours and the use of filters is the chinese epic ‘Hero’ (which I’ll be sure to review at some point as well). The colours leap out at you and add a layer that would have made the movie a lot less rich if they hadn’t obviously given it the attention that it required. By doing this the film is given a distinct look that is different from the very start. Greens and reds are used to dynamic effect.
The acting in this movie is very well done and the all the characters are very well thought out. This is the first movie I’ve seen with Audrey Tautou in it, but she got a fan for life as she plays her part in the most sublime fashion ever. She’s the obvious contender to Audrey Hepburn’s classy movie star queen title (must be something in the name to be honest).
Finally I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the superb soundtrack which gives that French flavour like no other movie can do. Once again another superb layer that is added which elevates. It’s like all the stars were aligned at the right time to make sure this movie was one of the greats.
If you’ve not had the chance to watch this superb movie then I seriously recommend you stop what you’re doing and make sure you secure it for tonight or this weekend. If you’ve got to buy it or rent it or whatever your life will be that much better after you’ve watched this gem captured on celluloid.
Creativity It’s really annoying, a month ago I was talking about being on a creative high, however for the past couple of weeks I’ve seriously been hitting a creative wall, AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN. I knew back then that the creativity wouldn’t last forever but it’s really frustrating when you sit down and honestly waste so much time doing sweet fuck all. I don’t know what’s going on, but even the regular haunts I troll to siphone creativity haven’t really been giving me the ideas, which is even more depressing. I’ve actually put my name down for sorting out Broken Kode V5 for CSSReboot, however I honestly don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it in time, we’ll see.
Travelling Seems like only yesterday I got back from Spain, and tomorrow I’ll be jetting off to Greece to see my parents and get some serious R&R done. I’ll probably do a little bit of reviewing for SplashPanel while I’m there so you can expect a few more reviews coming through (the last big push was when I was last there in Christmas). Tracey’s coming along for the ride, first time in Athens so that should be an interesting experience for her.
Formula 1 I was very upset when Webber lost power in his car, leading the Grand Prix no less (yes I know he was going to get overtaken, but he definitely had the podium in his grasp). The thing that made it slightly better for me was the great way in which he handled the whole situation, which showed a great deal of maturity on his part. He didn’t bad mouth the team, he quickly said that everyone had done a great job in the factory and that he just thought they had to sort out their reliability issues; which is completely true. He was obviously disappointed however he remained a complete pro. I also laughed when Nico said ' Yeah I could see him coming to crash into the back of me, and I was thinking " Please Don’t"'. Soo funny. I really hope the team gets it together for the next race because it’s really tough supporting a team that has the potential but doesn’t seem to be hitting the mark all the time.
Skype So I finally actually talked to Michael on the phone last week. I literally got my IPEVO phone, connected it and bam I got onto IM and was looking for anyone that I could test this on. Luckily Michael was on and we had a really good chat (lasted like an hour and a half) about everything under the sun. What was really great is how we were able to talk about blogging and this little hobby of ours and we both knew exactly what the other was talking about. I got the same feeling when I met Podz and Matt last year. If you ever get the chance to meet/talk to other bloggers you’ve been reading for a while I really recommend you do it because you gain a friend, rather than just an internet buddy. Talking or meeting makes them that much more real, even though you know loads about their lives in general (reading their stuff etc). I’ll definitely be looking into talking to more people online now. Skype is cool.
Inkscape I’ve been looking into using Inkscape because I want a lightweight vector graphics tool. This little thing has got a lot of potential, just needs to get past a few of it’s interface issues. I am having problems with it to be honest though. Basically I’ve got a Wacom pen, and for some reason Inkscape is seeing that as the only real input to the programme. Therefore I can’t use my normal mouse which is a real shit. Anyone have any idea what I should be doing to make sure that I can use BOTH my wacom pen and a normal mouse using Inkscape? I think it’s got something to do with the input devices properties but I have no idea how to disable it while my Wacom pen is still connected? Shame the site doesn’t have a forum or anything like that. (BTW I’m a windows user, so no Linux talk, thanks :) ).
Podcasting It would seem that if you’re a Windows user, you can’t create an enhanced podcast; that’s according to the Apple website. That kinda sucks because part of the reason for me wanting to do this is because I really liked the production quality of additing the chapters and the links and the images. Very annoying to say the least. The only alternative is to say a big fuck you to Apple and create a Windows Media Enhanced podcast, which to be honest is just as bad. We’re going to be needing a decent open source media player that can do the job properly, wonder if Songbird is going to be good enough?
It’s been a while since I got rained on in London. Generally speaking I always carry a bag with me. In it I keep my umbrella, Moleskin, pens and a book or magazine that I’m reading at the time. Tonight for once in a good long time I didn’t have that bag as the sky looked beautiful after my run. I would usually say that was a big mistake, however it was the dry type of rain. For those scratching their head, I’m sorry I can’t help you understand further than saying that there are several types of rain (even according to Forest Gump). The dry type is the one that rains for ages and your clothes don’t get completely soaked, nor do you feel that wet. Sure your head is wet, but not your face, and only the top of your jacket is wet.
Dry rain involves not having any wind, because that fucks everything up. Add Incubus’s Drive to the walk back home from the tube station and it’s a pretty mellow evening. Nope I’ve not had anything to drink tonight, I’m usually this weird.
So I’ve decided to take up podcasting. I’ve got to admit that it’s in many ways inspired by Michael sorting his one out and me twigging to the benefits or at least the potential of this alternate medium. I’ve been listening to podcasts for a little under a year now, but I never thought I’d jump into this field.
What made me see things slightly differently to be honest was the attention to detail that Michael has brought to his podcast. Maybe I just don’t listen to that many podcasts (which is just as well really) but I had never seen the images, links and chapters being used in a podcast before. It made things look a great deal more better thought out and the whole experience was so much more whole. At least that’s how I felt about it all.
So I ordered my Samson microphone (which cost me an arm and a leg) but that’s cool, I was definitely not disappointed when I saw it. It’s fucking huge and really heavy. In the case of microphones, I’m sorry but SIZE DOES MATTER :). Anyway the real reason for this post is to ask a bit more of a technical question. Now I got some information as Scrivs has asked the same question not too long ago, however I’m going to take it one step further.
What programmes should I be using to edit the final stream of speach I’ve created? I have no idea how to sort out the chapter breaks and add different images at different times for each chapter etc. Is this something I can only do if I’m on a mac? I’ll buy a microphone not change my operating system of choice for an experiment.
With regards to creating the podcast RSS feed and whatnot via WordPress, I’ve downloaded PodPress and think it’s got a lot of potential, are there any other WordPress plugins/goodies I should be looking into?
That was seriously one of the best weekend breaks I’ve had in a good long while. I think it was due to the combination of being back in Spain, the company and the actually city/village we visited that contributed to making it a special break. I’m going to dedicate a whole post to the main reason we actually went there as it definitely warrants one, however I’m going to talk about what I thought of La Coruna the people of La Coruna and the importance of language.
The last time I crashed into a similar barrier was when I was in Milan, last year. The barrier I’m refering to is the one of language. I could put the blame on the people of La Coruna however I know that this is in fact a problem or issue that exists the world over. Many natives of the world either don’t care for learning (or at least trying to learn) another language or don’t have the opportunity to learn one. In both major cities and minor towns there are many, many people that simply do not know another language apart from their mother tongue.
In a similar fashion Anglo-speakers believe that they should be able to get away with knowing only one language and that it is enough to get them by in this world. As the boundaries of man between himself and others become smaller and thinner it becomes more apparent that this is actually not the case. This laziness is in most cases brought upon by the widespread of Anglo media. Hollywood, music and TV has had an incredible amount of influence on perpetuating this laziness.
Even though I know 4 languages (in varying degrees of fluency) I know how hard it actually is to learn a language. I’ve been trying hard for several years to learn French and have found it pretty hard as I’ve never been to France nor have I ever lived in a French speaking language but I’ve not given up trying, you never know when it’s going to come in handy. Case in point was this weekend when the only language that I had in common with several of the people I met was French (there were several French teachers amongst those people we met).
I’d really like to thank David (who’s the most laid back person alive and a very nice guy), his girlfriend Elena (who is without a doubt the most outgoing person I have ever had the pleasure to meet), Bea, Eva and everyone else that talked to us or tried to talk to us (there were many but I honestly didn’t catch their names). The fact that all these people were so accepting of us seriously made the whole situation that we couldn’t actually converse with them properly even more frustrating to be honest.
Along with the food that we had (I seriously recommend the beef if you’re in the city as it most definitely is a specialty), the people that we met, the nightlife all gave La Coruna that special place in my heart. Of course I couldn’t finish this post without thanking my partners in crime for both organising and elevating the entire trip to the next level. Russ, Joe we’ve got to make this into a regular thing.
CHINQUE!!!!!!!!!
So about two weeks ago Joe sends out a mass email to the group and asks whether anyone is up for going to La Coruña (Spain) for a weekend and being at the opening of a gallery project Arup worked on. Joe was stationed (yeah I know not exactly a war zone over there is it, Spanish ladies and Spanish food, etc); anyway Joe lived there for a year during the construction phase so he knows the area.
I actually didn’t have a chance to properly read the email and he was there tapping me on my shoulder:
Within 2 hours the man had booked the hotel and every meal we’re going to be having from now (I’m meeting them in Heathrow Airport for breakfast) till we get back on the plane on Sunday afternoon. You see Joe, Russell and I are effectively the eaters of the office. We organise and try and get people to go out for one proper meal a week (oftentimes more) and generally push the eating agenda a little to spice things up. So what happens when you put all three guys together and tell them to go for a weekend of eating, drinking and shopping? Yeah should be fun. I’ll be back with crazy stories of Spain on Sunday. Have a good weekend everyone.
On Grooming Today I took a look at myself in the mirror and didn’t really like everything I saw. It not so much just my physical appearance but in the past few months I’ve honestly not been taking care of myself in many other ways as well. So I’ve decided to deal with a few things and approach life in a slightly different way than before.
Every once in a while I’ll meet someone and they’ll have a unique way of doing things that I honestly wish I could do as well. For example I used to know a girl who was extremely good at making introductions. If there was a new face in a group of friends, within seconds that person would be introduced. It’s a great quality to have as I usually forget to do this; so I try very hard to remember to make introductions and if I’m not introduced, will do so myself.
However one of the most annoying traits that I have right now is the fact that I take my merry time to complete various tasks. They’re not difficult nor are they taxing, it’s just I get lazy. I end up doing them, however I take my merry time of doing it. One of my mid-year resolutions is to try and address that. If/when I have a task that can be sorted out there and then, no matter how annoying or boring I will sort it out. Just deal with the task at hand and not run away from it, which I’m very prone to doing.
So Sunday evenings are going to be dedicated to sorting myself out for the rest of the week. Shoes will be polished, shirts will be ironed (for the past few years I iron my shirt in the morning before I go to work), room will be cleaned, laundry will be done.
On Exercise I also started running again this morning, which was EXTREMELY hard to do, however I do feel so much better for it now. The question of course is whether or not I can sustain that routine. Once I’ve gone over the 3 day hump it should be fine, problem of course is reaching that 3 day goal.
On Accessories Another point that I’ve decided to tackle is buying stuff I actually need, that I simply put off because I was generally lazy to get sorted. So I ordered my Skype phone, sorted out a digital camera and got myself a decent bag. Now the question I have is does anyone know of any stores that sell decent fob watches? I’m talking about the pocket watches that have a clip that you put on the side of your trousers. The reason is I hate having a watch on my wrist, and subsequently I don’t actually carry a watch save what’s on my phone. However oftentimes my phone isn’t actually on me. So yeah any fob watches people have seen that look cool do send me the link.
On Clothes Final item on the agenda was going through my wardrobe and seeing what was missing, what could be removed as I’d not worn it in over 2 years and what was nice but far too tattered. Now one of the things that I really need to get myself is a grey coat/jacket. I saw this guy on the tube wearing a really good one but felt a bit weird going up to him and asking him where he got his jacket. So I’m on the hunt for a light grey coat with a funnel neck (relatively large, maybe even with a couple of buttons). I’ve never actually looked at clothes online, but I’ve got to say that there is a serious MARKET out there for web designers to sort that industry out. Even the big names fall flat on the type of experience they’re presenting. I don’t know if it’s just my luck and not knowing where to go to search for these things, but I was seriously underwhelmed by my search…google actually failed me and it usually never happens.
As an aside - Yes I do generally work that way when it comes to clothes. I know what I want and know what it looks like, either because I’ve seen it or seen something similiar that didn’t look right because of something or other.
I’ve been keeping up with a lot of my feeds lately, mainly because I’m still waiting for version 0.4 of FOF Redux (which should hopefully have the new interface as part of the new features) but anyway. Paul’s done a nice little writeup of the new linux XGL OS from Novell. This news comes at an interesting time since we’re all waiting on Vista to come out. I’ve got to say that XGL looks oh so much more impressive than Vista…by a good long way.
If only Adobe would release it’s products for use on Linux, I might actually consider moving over to the Linux environment. Hell I’ve even started using it a work right now (for daylighting simulations).
A small part of creating the BK Logo was to have something to put on my business cards. As you’d imagine these things are not going to be your run of the mill cards, as I wanted to have some fun with them. So the mammoth task came down on me to actually do a bit of research on the net to see what is available and if they’re worthy of being my designated printers. I’m only half joking about the last part, I want them a certain way and am probably willing to pay the price to get them that way, so I expect to get quality for my cash.
Bearing in mind that I’ll be starting off with business cards now, the list of printed items will be ever increasing for sure. So in order to aid everyone and let you all benefit from the research that I’ve conducted into the matter, here’s a quick rundown of the various online printing services that I’ve uncovered, and how I rate them. At the end I’ve attached a pdf that you can download for your own reference (this being the first that I publish on the Kode, but hopefully not the last.) If you know of a better service that I should really check out, then by all means send the link to me and I’ll add it to the list. I am trying to make this as a bit of a resource page for all those looking for something similar, you might as well let some other smuck (ie me) do the hard work for you.
In terms of the kind of cards that they can produce, it seems the cards themselves have got a base rate, which is as far as I can tell the cheapest on the market, ($30 for 300 double sided, full colour cards), but they also provide additional enhancements such as die cutting, UV Spot coating, rounded corners and hot stamping. The cost for these enhancements does not provide any problems whatsoever regarding price either. So you won’t break the bank if you want UV spot coating (which I actually do).
My only complaint is that I think the final thickness of the card will be too thin. 230gsm or 250gsm doesn’t seem thick enough for me. I want at least 300 dammit :). They have a sample pack which came thorough before my cards came through. To be fair, at that price I was going to be doing ordering from them for sure. They arrived a couple of days ago and I’ve got to say that it’s just good to finally have them in my hands. When I contacted them regarding getting a different cardstock, this is what they replied with:
The only other qualm is effectively with the website which has some stupid popup system going on if you want to enter your account area, rather than keeping it within the site itself, which I found slightly odd and dated. Additionally even though they have a referer’s program, the fact that it isn’t as simple as putting in a link on my site that is distinctly my link (like say for Dreamhost) it becomes fiddly and I doubt I’ll be gaining much benefit from it, so they should really sort that out. But in the meantime if I’ve introduced you to this website, do a brother a favour and put me as your referrer (brokenkode is the username).
The website is very slick and easy to navigate. It’s neither ugly or overbearing and does actually scream of a subdued quality. I’ve already received the sample pack and I can vouch for the quality, however the price point for this company is not exactly inviting. The price page is very simple to understand, £125 will get you 250 300gsm cards with UV spot coating. One additional disappointment is the fact that they don’t seem to offer die-cutting or foil stamping.
Again, this isn’t the list to end all lists, this is just what I found on my search. I’d be seriously interested in knowning about different online printers that provide for business cards, postcards, flyers and just about any other printed media. So if you’ve got a good one up your sleeve, share and I’ll be sure to include it into the pdf. Which reminds me. This is a first pass at the pdf. I will be editing it, just slapped this together quickly because it’s a good tool I think to have the comparisons in front of you. Even though you don’t need to buy 1000 cards as a minimum, I’ve done that it’s possible to compare the prices correctly. A few of these places offer 1000 as a minimum.
Please tell me everyone saw superstar rookie Rosberg’s debut race in Formula 1? No. Well allow me to give you the cliffnotes, but please come more prepared the next time :).
Nico Rosberg is the son of Keke Rosberg, the 1982 Formula 1 world champion. He’s driving a Williams, powered by a Cosworth engine (much in the same way his daddy drove all those moons ago). He qualifies 10th on the grid which isn’t the greatest start, but much more experienced Webber (whom I rate a lot) came in 7th, and Mark Webber is meant to be a qualifying expert. So our rookie isn’t shining, he’s doing an amicable job, but nothing spectacular.
The race begins and our rookie fucks up on the first corner. He crashes into the back of the man he’s effectively replaced (my boy Ickle Nick Heidfeld, another fellow german). Ok seems like Nico is having a babtism of fire here on his debut in Formula 1. I was thinking, well it’s to be expected not everyone can have a huge start in F1. Some have to chill out and learn. It’s a gamble, he’s only 20 years old, give him some time, hopefully he’ll grow.
I really shouldn’t have discarded him so quickly in my mind. I should have waited for the end of the race before I made any decisions about the rookie. You see after his mini-crash he went and got his nose cone changed, went back out and was the only one (along with Kimi to be fair, who came from 22nd on the grid to get 3rd place) that was actually RACING!
Nico literally clawed his way from last spot on the grid all the way to 7th, which is an amazing feat, considering most drivers don’t overtake that many cars in an entire season. Is it the most amazing start to the season for the Williams team? In many respects it is, because it bodes incredibly well for the future. They’ve got a pretty solid package under them, one experienced driver and another driver that is calm and explosive.
I’m having a little bit of a problem finding the sneaky php script that is making me clock some serious CPU minutes (yeah like I know what those are, or give two shits about them). Dreamhost have been pretty good not bugging me about this too often, so you might experience a bit of weirdness on the kode, for one I’ll be switching to a normal theme (as my current one needs something like 30 plugins to work and I’m deactivating everything and putting a clean install onto here). So bear with me while I sort my house out.
For the past year the Shuttle team has been working on the beautification of the WordPress administration panel. The original team was just going to be myself and a couple of coders (Chris and Joshua) who were going to take the designs I came up with and make into a reality. Luckily Michael was having the same thoughts at the time and so he joined our rag tag team. In a cunning move he brought in the inimitable Joen to the fold as well. So now we had enthusiasm (me), flair (Michael) and experience (Joen) along with Chris and Joshua ready to kick some coding ass and take names. That young upstart Veloso joined us half way through the year to add some insight and youthfulness.
Matt caught a whiff of this and though we were forking, which obviously we’d never dream of. So we invited him to oversee where we were going with all of this. Meanwhile Steve was working on his Tiger admin panel half way through our design, and as you can imagine the stakes got raised ever so slightly. Unphased we continued to plow through. Email after email, mockup after mockup.
Version 2.0 was released and the first signs of the work we’d done on Shuttle began to appear. No they weren’t exactly how we mocked them up to be honest (you can blame us for the blue colours and the collapsable tabs on the side though). A year is a long time and we were pretty determinded to finish this off by the end of January. We blew that deadline, but the desire was still there.
As of today we’ve officially completed Wave One of the Shuttle project. I effectively took all the work we’d done so far, all the things we’d talked about and tried to come up with a cohesive solution. Just hammering page after page. I’m not really sure were it all came from, but I guess it was mainly due to the fact that we’d sat on this for so long that is was time we just dealt with it all.
Here are a couple of images for you to have a look. I’m working on a mini-site to show all the work done so far.
Just to stress a few things, these ARE NOT THE FINAL mockups. I have changed a great deal since our last working mockups. The boys now have the psds and will hopefully be tweaking and doing their magic to try and pull everything together. How much of this makes it into the final WordPress install is really dependant on Matt. The boys and I will be talking at length about our design decisions in the near future; we’ve got enough emails to troll through to find hot contested parts etc.
So for all those wondering about the status of this project, that’s where we are right now. I for one see this as a HUGE milestone since we’ve been working on this for over a year now and it’s good to find some form of closure. I know it’s never really over, but at least I believe it’s a step in the right direction.
I’m giving a presentation on what everyone is missing out on the web to my group at work on Wednesday. 90% of the people that are going to be there have never heard of Firefox, don’t know what Gmail is and certainly don’t know what RSS is. I’ve got a load of topics I will be talking about in detail, however I’d like to ask everyone reading this what they believe are the most important contributions, sites, applications, technologies that have been released on or related to the the internet in the past 5 years.
Currently I’ve got the following headings I’m playing around with:
What do you think I’m missing, bearing in mind I’ve got only 50 minutes to play around with and I’ve got to condense everything in roughly 40minutes with 10 minutes for questions.
Increasingly I’ve been reading many people on the blogosphere talk about their posts as articles; to which all I have to say is that you’re talking out of your ass if that’s actually what you think you’re writing when you post something on your personal weblog. In my eyes it’s very simple because blogging is RAW. It’s not something that’s been polished and massaged by several people before it’s released out to the masses. I don’t write a blog post and send it off to my editor and make sure that I’ve got all my grammar (note: I’ve corrected my spelling mistake but know that I originally spelt it with an e, and 5minutes later Andrew picked it up..didn’t even have time to review my post myself this time round) in the right order or that I’ve put my post in a correct structure with a nice resolution or question at the end of it all.
It might take me absolute ages to write something (a few weeks or whatever) but even then I honestly can’t claim that the final post is an article. If you’ve ever written a report then you give it to someone else to look it through. They see what you’ve written, they comment on things that you would probably never pick up on. In the end oftentimes the final outcome is very different to what you originally had. Once again in my eyes if you go through this external editing process (and only then) can you claim the final written piece to be an article. Until you do that, it’s a blog post.
It’s raw and guess what, it’s what makes blogging that much more special. It’s people’s thoughts downloaded, most often without the polish. In my eyes the less polished it reads the more fun it actually is. I’m not saying that blogging has to be complete and utter drivel because otherwise I won’t read it. However if you do this blogging thing long enough you start to develop your voice. You being to explain yourself in a specific and unique way to YOU. No polish. Celebrate your rawness! Stop calling it an article.
Some of the statements made in the descriptions often come across as pretty damn glossed over (also laughable in a few occasions), especially when tackling a subject such as this, but check out the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
(via pixelsurgeon)
Traditionally February is generally a shitty month. I’ve had several things mar it in my eyes that for a while there I used to dread the month. This year however it’s been an exceptional month in terms of creativity. I’ve seriously been able to pucker down and deal with things that have been on my plate for far too long. So much so that I’m going to give everyone the heads up on several things that I’ve been working on and will be completing in the near future.
Shuttle This is the big one. Believe it or not I can actually see the end of the road on this little project. Over the past year and a half the shuttle team has exchanged COUNTLESS emails, online chats, and easily 50 mockups or so. I’m going to talk about it much more detail in the month to come, however the first wave of a complete set of files (that’s every single page) will be making it’s way to the team this weekend. Currently I’ve got around 18 pages done and I keep coming up with new ideas and ways of implementing various things. I don’t know if it’s all possible however it’s definitely going to make for some interesting conversations. I do intend to do a similar site like the one for FOFR to show people the design process as I’m sure people will complain less when they don’t like something because odds are we’ve been down that road.
FOFRedux Redesign I’ve got a few more pages to do, hopefully I’l get round to them once I get the first wave of Shuttle mockups out the door. This is a great project that I can’t wait till it all get implemented as it will become a major player in the server residing RSS aggregator market, which is pretty anorexic at best.
BKV5: Remix Would you believe I actually got this one started as well. I know pretty much where everything will go, it’s just a matter of finding time. I’ve put the worst case scenario as going in for the 1st of May Reboot. It’s a while away I know but it might just take me 2 months to get it all done the way I want it done.
Splash Panel V1 Can’t wait to get this one done, as it’s going to be unlike anything I’ve done before. Once again it’s just going to take enough time to sort it out properly, there seriously is no rush.
Broken Kode | Season One The good news is that the book has taken a beating from my bag and it’s still in good shape. I’ve been slowly editing the pages, currently on April but I should have a great deal of it done once I get a couple of these projects out of the way. Once again I’m not in a rush because when it comes out it will be worth it.
I swear I don’t know where this burst of energy came from but it’s very welcome and can come and stay over at my house any time it wants, I’ll even cook it my famous chicken and spinach lasagna.
Wikipedia on your ipod!!!? Haven’t tried this yet, but damn that does look pretty cool. Thing is though my phone has got a better screen than my ipod mini and the battery lasts longer, so does anyone know of something similiar for a mobile phone?
Can’t believe I missed this, but Andreas Katsulas has passed away. For all those scratching their heads going:
Andreas was effectively the best thing on Bablyon 5 after the writing by JMS. If anyone every complained about Babylon 5’s hammy acting, I could always point in Andreas' direction and all those comments would evaporate because the man was a pro. Especially bearing in mind he wore so much latex on his face and yet could deliver more emotion than anyone else in the entire show.
I actually got upset when I read about it this afternoon since that means there won’t be any more G’Kar moments. Not that I was holding my breathe but he has come back to reprise his role several times. However my philosphy in life is not to be sad about the loss of a human being, but rather celebrate what they did during life. As such I’ll be reviewing Babylon 5 very soon and why (until Battlestar Galactica) was the best sci-fi series ever made.
In many many ways, it was elevated due to this man, Andreas Katsulas. RIP.
If you’re interested in these things and would like to see what goes into making the administration panel of a programme, then I present the Feed on Feeds Redux Redesign mini-site. It’s just a quick install of the excellent Zenphoto which I’ll be skinning heavily in the coming days. I’ve got such a massive burst of creative energy right now. This project is very different to the Shuttle project because there are no expectations on us. This is trying to promote an open source application which is why I’m being so open about it. I hope that this will help build some form of awareness to the project and get some interested programmers on board.
Expect lots of changes and loads of images to be uploaded there until I’m completely done.
Honestly this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me very often. I subscribed to the FOFRedux mailing list and started talking interface design. Shortly after joining the list Joe Shaw gave this scathing review of the application:
See the problem with Joe is that he lacks vision ;) . I know a diamond in the rough when I see one. After all if I was quick to judge then I wouldn’t be using WordPress. However he is right in some ways. Traditionally open source applications are seriously FUGLY. It’s mainly due to the fact that coders don’t really care for what something looks like. So long as it works. Here is a screenshot of the current application in use:
Today I decided to sit down and have a crack at redesigning the interface. Now based on previous experience, this sort of thing takes months. I’ve been dealing with Shuttle for over a year and a half. Even though we’re getting closer it’s been very tough to keep the motivation of everyone in the group up. I’m going to see it through no matter what. I decided to play around with FOFRedux because I really want a good RSS aggregator that sits on my server and because I needed a bit of a break from Shuttle.
4 hours is all it took to come up with a design that I’m pretty happy with. That’s it. Sure there are several elements that could use some work but this is my first stab at it. I’ve never used the famfamfam icons in any of my projects so that scratches an itch I’ve had for a while. Here’s a screen shot of version 0.3 of the redesign:
You can see a larger version of that image right here.
So if you think you can or want to help out, do join the mailing list as this is going to be something you will be using in the near future.
Go get yourself and account at coComment. Not sure how they’re going to make money off this, but track all the comments you leave on different websites all over the blogosphere. You can even have an rss feed and you can get them integrated into your actual blog. The design and implementation of the service looks fantastic. I generally hate to host things off my server, however until now I never had the chance to track my comments. Which is probably why I don’t comment as much on websites as I would like to. Expect to see my ugly mug appear on a few more websites.
Just thought I’d give all the crazy cats out there looking for some different Rin and Manji flavours a nice treat. It might seem as though I’ve neglected my little themes, but I have not forsaken them. I’ve had a couple of flavours (different coats of paint) sitting on my harddrive waiting for me to clean them up and release them. I’ll try and sort them out in the coming month and put them out for everyone to play around with them.
The thing is I’ve actually got the ULTIMATE theme in my head. I know EXACTLY what I want to do with it. I’ve got the name and everything, I’ve even got a couple of mockups scribbled in one of my moleskins.
The only problem is that I need a TEAM to create this bastard theme. If I get it done the way it’s in my head I can pretty much guarantee it will become the WordPress default theme. Bold statement maybe, but I’m telling you I’ve got a plan.
So if you’re up for a long burner project, probably 6 months or something (I’m in no rush whatsoever). I need someone that understands WordPress architecture and someone that is a complete whizzkid with Javascript. The could be the same person or completely different people.
I would ask one of my buddies but I really don’t want to overload anyone. We’ve got loads of things to deal with as it is anyway. Just to be clear I intend to stay well clear of the coding as I’ll make a right mess of it. Someone that knows what they’re doing or at least thinks they know what they’re doing would be good. If you’re interested, just drop me a line.
Definitely one to put into your RSS aggregator. UX magazine seems to be a pretty quality type of website. Slick design and seems to have a decent amount of good content in there as well. Not sure why it’s in beta, it’s not like it’s an application or anything. Must be a web 2.0 thing..ugg.
I’ve created a brand you category on the Kode. It’s called ‘Funk You Mr.Architect’. Before I get into what I’ll be posting about in the category I’ll put a small disclaimer that I like architects as people. In fact I live with one, so I’m not a professionalist.
I’m going to talk about the industry I work in, since I look around the blogosphere and there is little going on about this here industry. There are not enough blogs talking about architecture, engineering and everything inbetween. This is the industry that builds the buildings you live in, the transportation you depend on (from roads to train stations to airports), the schools and universities you learn in and the supermarkets and shopping centres you buy your stuff from. Someone has to sit there for YEARS to design these things, then someone else has to come along and build the bloody things while trying hard to keep with the design vision and intent.
Part of the reason for me blogging about this is to actual build awareness. One of the most frustrating things I’ve ever heard is a building described as a so-and-so architects' building. Lets get one thing very clear, a building or construction job is not ‘an architects’. The architect plays a role in a team that can comprise between 100 people and 5000 people. Each one of these people has the RIGHT to claim it as their project as well. However the way that the media and industry has been chiselled people seem to have forgotten this little fact, or don’t care to say it. I’m going to be going on the attack and will no doubt upset people but fuck it someone has to say something.
Hopefully I’m going to tell you what the architect’s role actually entails and what the other 5000 people do as well. If anything it’ll be educational. So for the first post we’ll just set up the major players for you to mull on.
A project generally speaking needs the following groups of people involved, at different times of the project’s life. The amount of involvement is clearly dependant on the type of construction contract everyone is working towards, but we’ll discuss that much later down the line.
Who amongst us doesn’t like a good bit of soap opera? Ok, what about a bit of soap opera revolving around the world that you spend a couple of hours a day on? Yeah I’m talking about the shit storm that’s blown up with 9rules announcing that it would be removing a few blogs from the network. I actually heard about it from Bryan, who was calling out the Blog Network Watch and the snitch that broke the information to them.
All I’m just going to say that Blog Network Watch knew about this before I did and all this happened in the span of me going to bed. Hell I only slept 6 hours!!! Meanwhile everyone’s going, is it going to be me? Is it going to be him? I never liked her!
We then got the official word from the 9rules boys. Then Tyme goes and gives the explanation about the whys of this current situation. Seems it’s not Scrivs just thinking to be contraversial, very much the opposite. While I don’t want to take away ANYTHING of what Tyme says the real fun is found in the comments.
I couldn’t stop laughing when I was reading the comment banter between Mike Rundle and Chris P. The culmination was when Mike says:
To which Chris comes back and clarifies what was actually in that email (yeah I know the tension the drama):
Call me a caty bitch. Call me a flaming gossip but that was really fun reading. I’ve not read a good flame thread in a while. It’s not really a flame thread as the guys kiss and make up and agree to meet each other in SXSW (a blogging conference or something like that).
Yeah like that was the end of that, seems like the Deuce over at JOAB has written something on this and the Cowboy has written a little something as well.
I’m just enjoying this. I think the snitch is an asshole and should just leave the network of his/her own accord. I think Scrivs and Tyme had to make some tough decisions, and it seems everyone and their pony knows best. Me? I’ve always followed a simple mantra:
And for the first time I actually know how it feels to be Rich Johnston over at Lying in the Gutter (he writes a weekly column about the gossip of the comic book industry). I read the column religiously every week, which begs the question, who’s going to step up to the plate and start writing a gossip column/blog on bloggers and blogging, I know I’d subscribe to that feed…but like we established earlier I love the gossip.
Not too long ago I wrote a review about Feedlounge. Kyle came back and voiced his opinion about the price of the service, which to be fair was the only downside I could actually think of for the actual application myself.
I remember feeling the same way when the Mint price package was first released. At first I thought that $30 was far too pricey for what I was getting. It only took me a couple of weeks before I caved in and bought the package and do actually really like it. It provides me with all the information I need and much more in a fashion and designed in a way that I really like as well. So for me paying $30 for a set of code that I can sit on my site doesn’t feel like a cheat. Shaun’s provided me with both a service and a product, that in some ways is tangible in this crazy virtual world. It’s the same sort of precieved value one gets from fonts. If you’ve never paid for a font then you probably don’t understand where I’m coming with this.
Anyway, I’ve decided not to go for Feedlounge. The value I am getting from that programme doesn’t really inspire me to pay for it. See had the guys gone the Shaun route and actually let me host Feedlounge on my server, with the whole login system right there, for $35 I’d have not even thought twice about buying it. Something like that makes perfect sense to me. Hell I’d have gone and paid $50 for it.
Not really what I was hoping to hear, but the Firefly Season 2 news that has been making the rounds, doesn’t seem to be anything but a lot of hot air and one fan’s dream. It’s nice that he likes it so much and stranger things have happened but I doubt we’re likely to see another Firefly series which is a crying shame. If you’re more interested in new Serenity stories head over to Splash Panel as I’ve just done a review for the gap between Firefly season 1 and the Serenity movie.
Darice has been kind enough to tag me into this meme, so here’s something you might not have known about my stoopid ass.
Four jobs I’ve had in my life
Four movies I can watch over and over
Four places I have lived
Four TV shows I love to watch
Four places I have been on vacation
Four websites I visit daily
Four of my favourite foods
Four places I would rather be right now
Four bloggers I am tagging
I said I wasn’t going to talk about the book itself until I had a url, but after tonight I’m pretty sure that ANYONE living outside the US will definitely not be interested in that URL even if I did give it to them. The reason is very simple, the shipping costs basically kill any and all thoughts of buying a book from Lulu if you’re located outside the US. Basically the cost of sending this 285 page book is $19.31. That’s just the god damn shipping. FUCK THAT. Seriously. That’s far too much to ask of anyone to pay for shipping on a single book.
The only saving grace is that I will be providing the book for sale via Amazon which means that the shipping costs will be considerably smaller. It’s a double edged sword however as the actual price of the book will be greater, due to including all the Amazon royalties and shipping costs. It’s a seriously cutthroat industry this publishing business, but I’m betting that even with the 25% markup by Amazon the final book price will be much more manageable. Still shocked me like you wouldn’t believe when I ordered my draft copy today.
I’ve got a lot of great things to say about the Lulu experience, which I’ll be posting soon enough, with LOADS of tips and watchits that I’ve encountered along the way, however their shipping calculator needs to be taken around the back and shot…several times…point blank.
This is the last time I talk about the book until I post the link(s) where it can be bought from. I’ll be writing some stuff about my Lulu experience when I finally get the book and hopefully provide some helpful insight and tips for people crazy enough to undertake a project such as this. I’ve finished formatting the book and I’m about to upload to Lulu and see what manner of trouble I’ll get into there.
In the meantime here’s the cover. This cover was actually my third attempt as the more work I did the more important this cover became to tie the package with a bowtie.
If you want to have a look at the cover on a grander scale, click here.
Had an intersting conversation with Hamish today regarding Kobe Bryant scoring 81 points in a single game. See that’s pretty insane. If your entire team scores less than 40 points and you alone score 81 points, there’s something seriously wrong with this picture. Either you’re a complete BALL-HOG or the alternative is your teammates suck so much monkey ass it’s unreal. Read the statistics they’ll make you appreciate just what a feat it was. The good thing is that it’s the first time that I’ve heard anything about the NBA in the mainstream, since that player beat the shit out of a fan in the stands. Makes for better reading, that’s for sure.
Michael god bless him has been trying very hard for years now to develop ideas (he’s really good at ideas, which is an unbelievable quality); his ideas (and he’s said this on several occasions) is to try and push people to go to his archives. He’s helped with developing the livesearch, or at least brought it to my attention. He did stuff to get the live Archives working, and then on his site he’s got a fantastic implementation for you to look at all his archives without actually leaving the cosy front page. Unfortunately the more I think about this the more I realise that he’s actually fighting a loosing battle.
What am I talking about? Put simply I read a great deal of stuff online. How much, well I’ve got over 200 sites in my OPML file at the moment, and it gets bigger every day. It’s honestly getting to the stage where I can’t keep up with all the sites. Lately I’ve been worse than usual, but that’s more to do with the fact that I’ve been STUPIDLY busy, mainly trying to sort this book out. I can’t actually keep up with everything and sometimes I’d rather read something a little while later.
Now the way I read blogs and I’m assuming that’s also how many people read them as well (might be making a big mistake but this is what I think), we read the freshest stuff. If we’ve missed a couple of posts it’s not the end of the world really, we might check it out. Now what happens when we come into a site that’s being published for over a year now. We’ve missed a lot of stuff. Does it matter? Maybe not, probably not. However for me there are certain sites that I wouldn’t mind reading and getting to know what the deal is really. I wouldn’t mind checking out the first season of Binary Bonsai or Chris J Davis or Avalonstar or Ifelse or Noscope or…and the list goes on. And that’s where this book comes in.
It’s a different kind of book. I guess what started off as something for me and maybe my parents and a couple of friends, is now part of an experiment. Is anyone actually interested in this stuff as a keepsake? My initial reaction is no, not really. So what happens if I actually make it into a professionally put together product. What happens if I enhance the book in several ways, not cut corners and provide it at a completely affordable price. Would that make a difference? I guess time will tell and I’m always interested in new ideas.
The unexpected thing was that this little experiment of mine has actually planted a seed in my head. A seed which is growing into something I didn’t really expect or can’t understand why it didn’t come to me before. So while this book is effectively the first one to come out under the Broken Kode banner, it won’t be the last. What’s more is that I won’t be the only writer that gets things published under the Broken Kode banner.
Well I guess it’s time to start breaking out the champagne as I’ve got a load of posts to start writing. Part of the reason I’ve been so quiet over on BK is simply because I’ve actually dedicated every conceivable waking hour over completing Broken Kode | Season One. What’s that you ask? Well I originally mentioned the thought way back in August. Those that have been reading BK for a while now know that I generally have a good deal on my plate, however you should be aware that I complete everything I start, no matter how long it takes me. I won’t release it until I’m 100% happy with it and that is where the problem lies. Being a perfectionist in my personal work means that things take time to get sorted out.
I’m going to be writing a slew of posts about this topic as it really does merit the attention. Season One is the title of my first book, based on the first year of posts at Broken Kode. The reason behind the book came about for a couple of reasons. The first was the fact that I can’t be sure that I will be blogging forever. As much as I’d like to believe that I’ll be blogging to the day that I die, well that’s not a really realistic statement. No one knows what the future holds and so I’d like to capture these years of words that I have spent the time and effort to formulate into something that’s solid and tangible. Something I can look at in 20 years time and smile at. So collecting all my posts into a book sounded like a damn good idea to me. This was going to be a 1 week job where I would simply download everything and then just format the posts ever so slightly so that I’ve got them in one location.
After I began playing around, my design and curious nature took over. I started thinking about cool formats, cool layouts to play around with ideas just kept popping into my head, and I instinctively reacted to them. What I hadn’t actually factored into the equation the sheer task that I was actually proposing on doing. See after I started playing with the layout, putting the posts in and just having the title in there, just wasn’t enough. I started adding more information to the entire package. This included what category the post was under, how many comments and the final cherry on top, commentary for every single post. As all this material was being compiled part of the fun was going through the motions and trials of getting something put together ready to get published.
The ironic thing is that the blog was to be used as a method to catalog my journey to get published, only for those posts to be used as the first book I get published. That is what then made me stop and consider what it was I was doing. This was my first book. Any which way I cut it, that’s the first thing I get published, that will be on Amazon, ready for anyone to go out and buy. It’s a book with my name on the spine. It had to be perfect. It had to be something that was worth while. Something I wouldn’t mind slapping down some cash and reading through it.
Now I’m going to be honest, the first 6 months of the book are very hit and miss. There are some great posts in there, and there are some sheer garbage. I don’t mind saying that. No one starts off at the top. People build their style, build their voices. This book shows the progression in no small way.
So how could I enhance this book so it’s something someone wouldn’t feel cheated into buying and actually enjoying? Why would anyone want to buy it in the first place, it’s all found online in my archives? Well I’ll tell you all about that in the next post.
When I’m not talking much on the Kode, it usually means I’m up to something. This has been a pretty long weekend for me. I didn’t go to work on Friday because I was pretty determind to finish off several of my projects. You’d be amazed at the amount of progress someone can get done if he’s under a self imposed deadline.
Of the things that was on the top of the list was to finally create myself a logo. This task is a lot simpler to say than actually accomplish because the honest truth of the situation is that I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get myself sorted with a logo for like over a year now. I couldn’t for the life of me decide what I wanted the logo to convey. I couldn’t for the life of me sit down and come up with an idea and run with it.
Honestly I tried everything. I tried sketching, hoping that devine inspiration would strike me and I’d be off, however I’ve come to realise and accept that unfortunately my mind simply doesn’t operate that way. Sometimes I can force the issue and will eventually submitt. This could be because of time constraints, it could be because of lack of energy to continue kicking the point into submission. However Broken Kode is different. Broken Kode is in many ways a reflection of myself and as such I don’t care how long things take, as long as they’re done properly.
Sitting on something for a long time however is not good. Taking your time and taking a year and a half to think of a logo is silly. Now I don’t know if it’s because I sat down and I thought things through, or if the pressure got to me but Saturday evening it hit me. I knew exactly what I wanted my logo to convey. I knew what I want to say with it, and I had a clear image in my head.
I’m not sure how most designers go about getting ideas to create things, but due to my background in weilding a pencil and ink brush, I visualise the entire thing in my head before I’ve even begun. I can ‘see’ everything clearly in my head. The final result might differ in the details, but the overall outcome is pretty close to what I envisioned at the start.
The one thing that really annoyed me was getting something to work as 16px x 16px for the new favicon. After going down to like 50px x 50px there seriously was no point to the whole thing. So you’ll notice the favicon is a bit different to the real logo, but the essence is there. I’m not going to base my logo on the basis that it’s got to fit into a 16px x 16px square, anyway the logo is going to be getting a lot of use in the physical world, so that takes a bit of presidence. For all those IE users that can’t see the favicon (first of all switch to Firefox) here’s an image,
This element only occupied 1/6 of my weekend. I’ll hopefully be announcing the other stuff later on during the week.
When the Kode is this quiet for this long, you know there is trouble afoot :). I’ve just spent the entire weekend trying to finish off one of my projects. I’ll hopefully be giving the full lowdown later on this week but I thought
I talked about Feedlounge a while ago. It was announced earlier this week that the application would be moving away from it’s Beta stage into a public release sometime next week. So I thought it’s might prudent that I give everyone a bit of a proper review for this little online application.
As you might or might not know Feedlounge is an application that allows you to read your RSS feeds. What’s an RSS feed you ask? In short it’s a link from a website. You download that specific link and paste it into your Feed reader. There are many feed readers all over the place. From desktop applications, to ones that intergrate with your browser, to ones that live online. These applications check the RSS feed, and if the website has been updated it actually returns all sorts of information (depending on how the owner of the website has decided to format his RSS feed).
I’ve been using Sage exclusively for about a year and a half or whatever. It’s been a great little addition to Firefox and has served me well. However the experience has been less than fun lately. Using Feedlounge I see that I’ve actually been missing out a great deal.
One of the nicest thing about the application is the interface. The gradients used are subtle. The text is nice and clear. Everything is well laid out, but the guys have anticipated the fact that people have different reading habits and so they’ve included 3 different layouts.
There have been a couple of new features since I last checked up on it. I’m not sure if they’ve been added since I first looked at it, or rather I just didn’t notice it the first time round.
Unread Items. Grouping the unread feeds is very cool (remember I’ve been using Sage).
Tags addition. All applications that store elements in anyway, SHOULD HAVE TAGS. They’re words you associate with a specific post of feed item. The tags can span different websites/blogs.
Flagging. I’ve actually wanted to be able to highlight things that I’ve enjoyed reading or provides some sort of link or whatever for a while now, so the fact that you can flag an item is something very very useful indeed.
History. That’s also a nice element that I’ve not been able to use due to using Sage. Scrolling through the last week’s worth of feeds, highlighting when I’ve read them is a great little addition to my reading experience.
The overlay menus. I actually like these because they don’t hinder your experience. There’s no clicking between pages as you do in most web-centered applications. Everything goes cloudy and the main element is brought to the forefront. I live that idea mainly because it doesn’t disrupt my experience which is what these guys are effectively selling…which nicely brings me to the bad.
This one is a bit annoying but I guess that’s part of the way things go. I’m used to actually deciding when to refresh and see if there’s any new stuff. Unfortunately it’s done automatically which is not the end of the world, but it’s just annoying for me.
Everything has a price. Feedlounge is not free, which is a shame really because I would have liked to pay for it, however $5 a month seems a bit much for what I’m getting. If they’d come back and said to me it costs $3 a month (maximum I’d effectively pay for a service like this), I’d have signed up in an instant, now I’ve got to actually think about it.
I’ve got to think about it because it’s a really well put together program. The thing is though it’s not something that is helping me produce anything. It’s not something that is helping me collaborate on anything, store something. It’s effectively a program that helps me read stuff in a nicer way. I dunno part of me feels that my $5 a month should be spent on something else. I’ve honestly got to think about this further.
All in all Feedlounge is a great little application with more going for it that against it. I’m going to have to really think about whether or not I buy into it, but like I said that’s a tribute to Alex and Scott for their hard work. They’ve built something they could be proud of.
Thought it was important to point out to everyone that the latest version of Zenphoto is out. It’s been a long time coming but I for one am glad that Tristan has found someone to help him out with this little application. So hat’s off to Tristan and Todd (you greek buddy?), they’ve done well. I’ve still got to get a theme going and actually upload some photos but I’ve had other things on my mind at the moment. A review of this little program will come soon enough.
Back online which is very very cool indeed. I swear not having an internet connection at home was a lot harder than I thought. If I didn’t have this many commitments for January 2006 you’d have thought that I could live without the noise for a week or so.
Sadly I honestly can’t do that. I’m too attached to the internet at the moment and everything it offers me. I know it sounds strange but it’s my line to the world. I’ve learnt a couple of things in this week that I really must get myself an internet backup, maybe a shitty modem or something for when this sort of thing happens, write down important phone numbers in one place. While we’re told that we should be moving to a paperless office, I think that’s stupid until we get completely wireless access from 3 different points and where you honestly cannot get cut off, except in the event of a nuclear war or something, in which case it doesn’t matter whether you’re online or not.
Anyway loads of writing and reading to get on with. My RSS reader is filled to the brim with goodies to read.
Got back home yesterday to England and I’ve got no net at home. Therefore until this gets sorted out at home I’m effectively without my eyes and ears. The good thing I guess is that I’ll get some of these projects done and dusted without ANY distraction whatso-ever. The net is a double edged sword I’ve found. Irreplaceable for certain things like downloading and sharing information and keeping up to date and communicating, while at the same time a seriously amazing way to waste a fuck of a lot of time. Damn it’s going to be a tough week. So I won’t be posting here or commenting on anyone’s blog, that’s annoying.
Perfect start to 2006, the super talented Michael Pham ofMPSoftware releases the new version of PHP Designer 2006. This is my preferred editor of choice, even though 2005 had loads of little bugs it was still great. A full review of this is forthcoming.
One idea I’m going to try and do this year (and who knows if I’ll actually continue with it, but it seems like a good idea now) is to write down what I want to accomplish by the end of this month. Baby steps, month by month.
RWebsDesigns Code cleanup I’ve got to clean up the code for Mark’s site as it’s a bit messy right now and not all that easy for the man to change and update certain elements that if I give them a few hours I should be cooking on gas. This is my first priority when I get back as it’s really important to close the book on projects in a nice big bow tie.
Shuttle We’ve got a lot of work to do and January has been agreed to be the time that we do it. I’m completely dedicated to doing this properly so I’ll be examining EVERY single element of the design and making sure it’s there for a reason. This is the second most important element of work this month.
Broken Kode | Season One Blook The design of the book is complete. The posts have been formatted and included. My running commentary has been typed out. I’ve got 4 illustrations complete. This leaves me to complete the cover design and 8 more illustrations. The deadline is tight however I will have the entire package done by the 15th of January, ready to be printed as a draft to check for any mistakes and get it sent to Lulu.
Codename: Borg I’ve got several things to get cracking on this one, as Snook is building up momentum. There’s going to be a lot of sketching going on in the next couple of weeks but I really love the graphical direction we’re going with this, so working on this will be a bit of a break.
Broken Kode Remix I’ve had a little time to sit back and reflect on the year that passed. Not as much as I would have liked to be honest but things are slightly more clear now. One of the things that’s actually come from ‘sitting with myself’ is the fact that Broken Kode in it’s current structural form is actually restricting me creatively. The problem with this design is that it doesn’t hold the flexibility that I want.
In addition my needs and focus has changed slightly since it was launched over 4 months ago. In that time the changes to the site have been pretty minimal, so it’s about time I got itchy fingers again. However I’m actually hoping that the new version will address a lot of the points structurally that I’ve had currently to provide the level of information in the way I want to present it. Thing is the aesthetics are goingto remain very similar to what I’ve got here. Things will be rearranged slightly but hopefully you’ll understand the reason behind the remix and reshuffle. When I say it’s a Remix, the graphics will get used again but not in the same way. It’s a natural progression, however what started off as a slight tweak soon became a complete redesign. My problem was how I was going to incorporate the current image while at the same time build for the future as well.
This isn’t on the highest list of priorities but I feel that in doing this final tweak I can actually forget about the general design of Broken Kode for an entire year! That’s what I’m trying to build towards to be honest. Have the site I’ve always wanted that can be enhanced but does not need to be changed drastically. Roll on Version 5 | Remix.
In a way it’s really important for me right now at this particular time in my life to seriously take a step back, reflect and look at what’s gone before. It’s posts like this that actually make my blog an extremely important part of my life. The sheer amount of information and experience one goes through in a year is amazing. Since I generally can’t remember what I ate yesterday it’s even more important for people like me.
I’m going to warn you however that this is the single longest post I’ve ever done in 2 YEARS of blogging now. I’m generally a verbose person anyway. You’ve been warned.
Manji and Rin Manji was released at the tail end of 2004, for Rin was released in March. I do want to thank two great personalities on the Broken Kode forums. James and Steph you guys are absolute gems and I thank you for all the help you’ve given to people throughout the year.
Alex King Theme Design Competition Coming second place in the Alex King WordPress Theme design competition was a great little boost for my thirst for creating better designed websites. I’ve still got a great deal to learn, however I’m a lot more confident than I was a whole year ago before the Manji and Rin. I’m only happy when I’m constantly learning and fighting to understand things, and these two themes gave me the necessary building foundations for the future.
Broken Kode Designs Which kind of leads to the fact that I designed this site 3 times this year. To me that implies that I seriously didn’t have much of a clue as to what I wanted, which isn’t completely true. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for this site as my needs and the reader’s needs has shifted. I had the idea for version 4 that I really wanted to implement. It’s been a very successful design and one that I’m very proud of and very humbled by all the nice comments people say about it.
Human? Based on a review of a book I did, I was invited to contribute to the book, which should get published sometime next year. I’ve included a double page spread and one of the playing cards. However due to my hard-drive crash, I actually lost that information, so I’ll get it like everyone else on the DVD that’s included with the book.
CoCo I introduced CoCo, which is actually not the first mascott I’ve ever created but definitely my favourite. All future BK designs will have the little guy in one form or another.
Emmortel I launched another website, Emmortel to coincide with May1st Reboot. I enjoyed doing it and I’m generally happy with the design, unfortunately I didn’t update it are regularly as I wanted to. This was also because I realised that I really should be putting all my efforts into Broken Kode, and that my portfolio section could be included into this site. That aspect of the site is still giving me some serious grief but it’s good that it’s on the main site as it motivates me even more to do something about it.
Broken Kode Originals A couple of weeks ago I introduced my first Broken Kode Original. One of many to come in the near future. I’ve got around 5 on my plate at the moment. I’d like to get to the stage where I’m commissioned for at least one of these a month. I think I could probably increase it to two a month but no more than that to be honest.
Broken Kode Shop This was something fun to do. I got a massive buzz getting those prints printed off. I didn’t do it for the money because if I did then I was going about it the wrong way that’s for sure. I’m just immensely grateful to all those people who have supported me in this whimsical idea of mine.
The second item to be offered from the shop is nearly completed and that’s my first blook. I’ve got some serious work to do before the 15th of January, however I’m excited about this package as it’ll be the first book I put on my shelf that has my name on the spine which alone gives me Goosebumps just thinking about it.
Introduction of Splash Panel I’m actually appalled at myself for taking this long to actually get this particular show on the road. I guess I was scared of the amount of time and dedication a site such as this would take. My ambitions for this site are very big. The plan is for Splash Panel to be the first destination people go to for news and reviews and information about the latest graphic novels. Fortunately for me (unfortunate for the industry) most comic book types are still in the dark ages with respect to the internet, as they honestly don’t know how to design a website or present the information for their sites. That’s an article I’ll be writing at some point to flesh things out more.
I believe the site will get a huge amount of momentum once I’ve done the design for it and had a couple of interviews under my belt.
Codename: Borg Borg has moved forward than just an idea and will hopefully be something I can be proud of in the near future. I don’t want to talk much about it just yet as we’ve still got a long road before we’re in Beta, but it’s going to be a really fun road I can tell you that much. Snook is a code-master. The guy’s sooo blasé about coding it’s unreal. Stuff that would make my head hurt he just shrugs it off and calls it easy, that bastard, lol.
9rules Network In July I was accepted into the 9rules network. While the added exposure has been great, honestly that’s the least important perk of being in the network. For me having gained several friends is worth more than 2 million hits a day. That’s what makes the network special, the people.
Inksmith In May I started thinking aloud. Seems I wasn’t alone in my line of thought. Others felt the same way. The project and idea lay dormant until I could actually give it the proper time it required and so Inksmith was born. The team behind the idea is top notch and is always and constantly expanding. We should be announcing something in the not to distant future regarding this little idea. I find it amazing how just the idea has sparked off loads of conversations but that’s a good sign as people have opinions, and once we’ve actually gotten the framework sorted out, people will appreciate what we’re doing that much more.
Internet Friendships One aspect of this year that I only really was able to put my finger on as I thought about this list more was the number of internet friendships I was able to build and nourish over the past year. It’s gotten to the stage where I don’t think too much about these things anymore but thinking back a year ago this wasn’t the case. I consider Phu Ly, Michael Heilemann, Joen Asmussen, Jon Snook, Bryan Veloso, Chris J Davis , Podz, Matt Mullenweg, Erik Sagen and all those crazy cats over at inksmith and 9rules as friends.
December also brought about the very first London WordPress meetup. I hope to repeat this in the near future as there are a couple of people that live in London that I would like to meet (yeah I’m looking at you Phu).
However this event spurred me into going back to Lebanon after 2 years. I was able to vote for the first time in my life. It was a bit of an anti-climax, although it was extremely important that I do that.
Basketball With the exception of the Corporate Games in Manchester, my basketball life this year was pretty weak. To substitute for my lack of basketball action I did take up running which I’ve been pretty lax on in recent months, however that’s more to do with work than anything else. The funny thing is I got a couple of nasty emails due to those posts.
London Attacks Went through a pretty tough time for the city of London during the month of July. Stathis of course went through worse, however I’m glad those around me got through this unscathed.
Top Movies I actually watched loads of movies, however I didn’t review half as many as I would have liked to. I might make a more concerted effort next year.
Top Books I didn’t read as many books as I would have liked to, but the few that I did I must say I enjoyed greatly.
Top Graphic Novels To be honest I’ve written a massive post about this over at Splash Panel where this sort of thing is meant to be.
Because it was too big for one post, here’s the continuation of my best of the net round-up.
Love it or hate it this little application has definitely caused a bit of noise on the internet. Some say it was all hype and no substance. Some say that there’s no need for it. Some say the developers behind the browser are only interested in the money that is generated from the use of a the little google search at the top right hand corner. And still others don’t really give a shit because they’re still using IE and don’t know that there are alternatives out there.
I just like the fact that there’s development going on and competition in this field because it will help make browsing a better experience for everyone. Which is the direct opposite to what was one of the major points of this year…
I felt really sad when Macromedia was bought buy Adobe, hell I didn’t even know that Macromedia was for sale in the first place. For me the biggest thing is the fact that I’ll be loosing Freehand, which is one of my favorite light-weight vector illustrator tools out there. I’ve written about this. As most websites are created using Macromedia products this is a major issue. The lack of competition in this field will be very much missed. This is one of the reasons I’ve been turning to Open Source software more and more. The people might change but the software will always be available for the next person to take it on and go off with it.
This is just a list of websites that stuck out as being above exceptional for me at least and ones that I would make a concerted effort in reading everything they wrote. In no particular order.
Brian’s a machine. He constantly and consistently churns out fantastic article after fantastic article. What amazes me the most about the guy is the speed and depth with which he’ll tackle every single article he writes. Big fan of the man’s site and one that I always check with enthusiasm.
I like Paul’s voice on this website. He writes a lot of stuff all over the place, but I read his words here and they sometimes make me smile sometimes make me roll my eyes, but generally speaking they nearly always make me think.
Bryan’s a buddy, and I can say that with conviction. It’s actually crazy but our humours are very much alike, at least I’d like to think that way because when I read the man’s stuff I generally can see where he’s coming from and usually see the same funny side of things. There was a time when he was pumping out a lot of MASSIVE articles, one after the other. I like his enthusiasm and it’s brilliant we’re working on a couple of projects (3 of them to be exact which is the most from anyone person I believe) together.
I’m a huge fan of Noscope. Joen shares his knowledge, both by actually answering my questions and providing quality content. Then once a month he inspires and depresses me at the same time. What’s not to like?
I hate this Bonsai guy. He knows too much and must be stopped. Therefore I’ll be heading a new project next year called Stop Bonsai. Go over there and register.
As a WordPress user can you imagine a day without a post from Weblog Tools Collection? Yeah neither can I. The man is a machine.
I really hate the fucking term. It’s just annoying, however sometimes when we’re trying to explain an online application we fall down to it for lack of better term. I for one have tried several applications which I’ve honestly thought very highly of. A few worth mentioning are:
Writely - Which I used with Erik in our collabration for James, and one I’m using with Bryan for Sharq.
Backpack and Whiteboard - Seems like it was years ago that 37signals introduced these little web application to the world. They’ve been a success for them and their other suite of applications. They have made us think about the internet in another way and as such it’s been good fun watching what this company has in store for the future.
I’ve been completely obssessed with Red Out Racer from Kiloo. This is a game for my k750i and I’ve got to say it’s one of the most amazing and addictive games found on a mobile phone EVER. It’s effectively a mini version of WipeOut, complete with all the options you’ve come to expect from that game:
The graphic menus are all animated and this game seriously raises the bar in games on a friggin phone! The gameplay is just as addictive as on WipeOut and while I do wish the joystick was better, once you get used it you don’t really think about it much.
Now that I know that this level of game exists I’m seriously going to start looking around. The thing is while this works for me, as it’s my gaming console because of it’s size and the fact that’s it’s my phone so I’m going to carry it around with me anyway.
This whole experience got me thinking about the PSP. I originally thought that I would buy the PSP, but I can’t see myself taking it out and playing with it on the tube or anything like that; which doesn’t seem to be a strange way to think as I’ve never seen anyone on the tube or elsewhere using it out and about. Where does everyone use their PSP and isn’t it obtrusive for carrying around?
I’ve got my year in review post (which I’m still writing) however I can concentrate on the best of the ‘net 2005. It’s been a busy little year for cyber-space with a lot of crazy ideas. Seeing what sticks has been the name of the game. I’ve split it into a couple of posts because it was getting too big to digest.
Finally there seems to be a competitor to Google’s onslaught on world domination. Yahoo! used to be a big player back in the day, so it’s nice to see that they’re giving Google something to think about. While everyone is pitting Google against Microsoft, we’re slowly seeing another player that seems to be coming to focus as well. Yahoo! have sorted out their email app, and have added a few services to their roster that makes it slightly more interesting to watch than Google. Even though Google upped their storage indefinitely, introduced Gtalk and added things like rss feeds to their email accounts (Yahoo! came first with this), Yahoo!’s actions seemed more calculated. Although I don’t use Flickr or Delicious, but I know a lot of people do. It’s good for the netscape, so I want to see how Google counter attacks (and I don’t mean them buying something) but releasing something new.
This was an interesting thing to watch. I’ve honestly not seen many applications that can match this sort of success, it’s nice for Shaun and it just proves that if you’ve got a good idea and you make it both functional as well as pretty to look at then you’re onto something. I personally believe that he could have made more money if he’d brought the entry price down slightly as it’s just a stats program, it’s still interesting to watch it’s popularity grow. Should be interesting to see if this will continue or not.
Blogging networks were on EVERYONE’S keyboards (or lips whatever you want). Broken Kode joined 9rules, and something like 5 million blogging networks popped up around the place. The main reason is making some money from ads such as Google’s adsense or Yahoo’s equivalent. The big news was Weblogs Inc being sold to AOL for whatever number it actually was (what is it this week, $20 million?).
To be completely honest I actually shy away from networks except the 9rules because the actual model is very very different. It takes a specific voice for me to actually give it a go and something like Jack of All Blogs. The Cowboy has got some serious bile festering in his stomach and it’s seriously great to watch him unload it onto people. Notice the trend, I follow the person, not the blog. Which is why I don’t read Engadget anymore, but we’ll talk about the best websites of 2005 in part 2.
Treehouse was released from the boys over at Particle Tree and I finally got an internet magazine that I could seriously get into the articles. It’s great looking package and well worth the price of admission. The topics range and you’re always going to gain a lot more knowledge than the price of an individual copy. Here’s hoping 2006 actually produces a print version of this excellent publication.
I’ve been quiet for a couple of days as I’ve tried a bit of a net detox effectively. Also all my feeds are sitting on my computer at home as I’ve still not subscribed to an internet feed aggregator. The way in which it works for me just isn’t there yet. I have an idea about how it would be perfect for me and either until I learn how to do it or someone very ‘good’ does it for me I’m going to have to be quiet for a while, so I’ll have some serious amounts of reading to get on with when I finally get back home, which is cool, first week back at work is always fucking boring (except I know it’s not going to be the case for me).
Seeing as I’ve not been back to Athens in over a year, there are loads of little things that have happened in that time. Most of all are all the various buildings and shopping centres that have been popping up all over the place. The real problem is that Athens now feels seriously condensed and completely overcramped. I’d love to say that it’s actually a good thing, but it isn’t. The infrastructure set around it is pure and utter bollocks.
However the thing that made a serious impression on me is the seriously ugly architecture that has been popping up all over the place. I’m going to be taking a series of snappy snaps to show exactly what I mean but these things defy explanation. In a country where marble is arguably one of the cheapest commodities out there, the ENTIRE Metro system is marble rather than concrete and other shitty finishes, marble is cheap here, it’s literally found up a mountain 20minutes from where I’m writing this. But no instead we’re subjected to fucking metallic monstrosities with some of the most disgusting colour coordinations this side of a lime green Ferrari; as they say the proof is in the pudding, so I’ll be giving you the proof very soon.
It’s a shame really as Athens is a city that oozes with character. From the ancient ruins around the place to the 1930s architecture to the special structures of Santiago Calatrava for the Athens 2004 Olympic games. Now all that’s being added is UTTER shit.
I’m typing this from Athens from my bro’s computer (the biggest brick you’ve ever seen), bastard doesn’t even have Firefox, so I’ve got to sort this rubbish out for him…meanwhile I’ve got some serious R&R to catch up on. I’ll be writing a whole slew of reviews for Splash Panel as I’ve got 50% of my graphic novel collection still in Greece so that’s going to be really good fun rereading some damn good books.
Last couple of days in London have had some seriously good times. One Thursday I said goodbye to that Scottish bastard Gordon from work. It’s the end of an era, as for the past 2 years we were effectively the only 2 electrical engineers in the group actually doing the engineering. We started off on the wrong foot, which I’m starting to think is actually a good thing for me because I know I have a good buddy that I’ll actually care to find out what he’s doing in the future.
Life works in a crazy way because while one friendship closes others blossom. Met a few people after seeing Gordon off, in this pub who were a brilliant bunch. Chantel and Darryl, brother and sister, 2 of 11 siblings, from the same mother and father. That’s one large family. The topic of conversation all started off with apple pie, so I guess it’s true that food or at least talking about food brings people closer together.
Then on the flight back I was editing my story and as it turned out I was sitting next to Marina from school. We used to be on the same school bus so it was funny catching up on things. Strange and amazingly deep conversations for 2 o’clock in the morning on a BA flight back home.
Have a good time everyone, where ever you are, whatever you’re doing.
When I first heard about Flock I asked the obvious question of what was going to make it better or bigger compared to Firefox. There were a couple of features that made me smile, however the one tool that I was seriously very excited about was the fact that blogging could now be integrated directly into my browser. That would definitely make things that much more fun for me. However the news we got back from the original launch however regarding this particular feature weren’t as favourable as I’d have liked. And so Flock sits on my desktop waiting.
Enter Performancing, a new Firefox plugin. Performancing made me actually stop and think about the need for the Flock browser. Right now Firefox is the single most important application I have on my computer. Oh sure I can’t live without Photoshop, but at the same time my link to the world, news, friends and entertainment is via this little engine that could. So changing it for Flock will be a tall order now that Firefox effectively has everything I could want from it. Oh sure it doesn’t look as slick as Flock, however it’s the main code. It’s where it starts. Flock will follow.
Many people call Firefox just a browser, but it’s a lot more. The plugin architecture has expanded it into a lot more in ways Internet Explorer can only hope to one day match, but never will. Open Source applications are the future and the sooner people realise this the better we’ll all be. If I get an RSS Aggregator included as part of the core code then I’ll be a happy bunny,…hang on a minute, didn’t the Flockesters ask for what we’re looking for in an aggregator?
Yes, it seems like they did. The Flock bunch seem like a pretty savy bunch. So now the single most important thing that is missing in a browser, will hopefully be integrated as well. I honestly can’t wait for this to happen, not that I don’t like Sage, however this could be so much more and honestly I can’t use a stand-alone application for reading my feeds. It just doesn’t work. Now if only someone can also link up my rss links from an online source that sits on my server or an internet service or whatever and links up to any Firefox application (provided I put the password etc), I won’t need multiple copies of my OPML file.
So apart from the nicer look and potentially a feed aggregator (which will no doubt be ported over to FF, what can the Flock guys do for their final launch to make me choose their browser over Firefox? You ask, but why oh why would they want me? I guess for the money that the browser gets from people like Google etc for using that tiny little search function in the top right hand corner.
Introducing the first in a series of Broken Kode Originals (I’ve got another 5 to go). What’s a Broken Kode Original? It’s an original website design by me. The first one has gone to Mark Wade of RWebsDesigns.
It all came about a while back when he got some lip over the design of his theme. The ball got rolling from there and I promised him the design in 2 weeks. Yeah, that didn’t happen but the main reason behind that was that I’m an anal retentive bastard. The nice thing about it all is that Mark just waited patiently, which obviously made me want to sort this out a bit sooner rather than later but at the same time I had to make him proud of the trust he put in me.
In the end I really enjoyed doing this site emmensely, even when IE made me want to pull my hair out (which reminds me to thank Jon for being my knight in shining armour, you rock buddy).
My inspiration for the theme as the name implies was the Autumn leaves that until a month ago were a vibrant part of the London landscape. It just seemed like the perfect design since in our conversations, Mark did say that he would like:
One last thing when going over there to have a look, please don’t look underneath the bonnet, I’m still sorting out the code but I had to go live because I’ve kept the man waiting far too long for this.
See that’s how a fucking ROCK concert should be like. It’s 10 years too late, but at the very least I can say that I have now finally seen the Foo Fighters live. I owe it all to Yasmine and Matt who couldn’t make it as they had a wedding to go to instead, so Stathis and I got the tickets. This is our music. So we get ourselves to Earls Court, do a COMPLETE roundabout way to get to the actual venue. Once we got there, we realised that we were actually sitting in the furthest place possible to the venue. I’ve drawn what the problem to explain. Hell even Dave Grohl gave a massive shout out to the 6000 people that were sitting 6000 feet away from him. It’s completely ridicoulous.
So we eventually got through to the bottom seated area, which was pretty cool. Then we waited. The second the Foo Fighters came on, that was it we jumped over the rails and we were in the crowd. When watching something like the Foo it’s just too damn difficult to just sit there and not want to jump around.
I’m just going to wait a couple of days before some special person puts the concert online because I have got to get my hands on that 10 minute version of Monkey Wrench. It’s one of my favourite songs by the Foo. In the lead up to the solo, Dave didn’t actually sing the monologue, which is like the ultimate part of the song (5 years after it was released I can still scream it out perfectly), so I was really disappointed at first that he didn’t go through with it and let the crowd sing it for him… oh but wait young padawin one, he comes back 6 minutes later when you least expect it and screams it down the mic. Ultimate moment of the show and seriously very very hard to top that, the encores were good but not a candle.
Oh yeah and the lasers were pretty amazing as well.
Time for reflection on the year that’s passed us by. This isn’t my end of the year analysis, (that’s still being typed out). It’s been pretty tough at work and that has propagated into my overall anxiety in general. Not really as calm and collected as I’d like to be. I simply flip very quickly and have less patience than I usually would give something. I’m not the only one that seems to be reflecting about things, Chris has hinted at this before, so it will be interesting to see how he follows through with this promise to himself.
One of the things that I don’t like is loose ends. I don’t like unfinished projects. I have understood something very clearly about myself. I’ve got a lot of enthusiasm for different projects and ideas and I will see them through no matter what. The only problem is that these things tend to take a lot longer than I actually want them to. I’ve come to live with that, however I’ve also found out that I have to set myself a deadline and work towards that deadline. In the end while it might seem hard at first to get into the rythem the final outcome when you look back so long as there is consistency little by little Rome is built.
So looking back and looking forward at what I want from the next year and what I plan on doing. This is a long one, so be warned.
I’m going to be retweaking my gallery section because to be honest I’m not terribly happy with it. I’ve got some ideas but I need to incorporate them into the v4.5 design. This leads into my next major item.
If you’re looking for the ultimate in modern art, I direct you no further than one of my favourite artists out there, in any medium. His name is Banksy and he’s a graffiti artist. However he’s a little more than just a graffiti artist. The man is also a genius of his form. Reading Computer Arts for a couple of years came with getting introduced (although not as often as I should have been) to some true creatives around the world. Buro Destruct spring to mind, as do Identikal and more recently Banksy.
What sets this guy apart is that his graffiti has got a story to tell and it’s just plain clever. He’s got a message to convey and doesn’t mind going out of his way to convey that message. Rather than decreasing the collection in an art gallery (either by defacing it or stealing it) he increases it by adding one of his paintings amongs other in such notable areas as the Louvre (in Paris), the Tate (in London) and the New York Metropolitan Museum (in NY). The funniest aspect of it all is the CCTV camera footage that he includes in the book of him putting these paintings on the walls. The rest of the book will either make you smile or laugh out loud at what he’s trying to say.
What made me laugh even more was the quote at the back of the book by the London Metropolitan Police:
As he says himself, you either love him or hate him. His work can be seen in his book Wall and Piece or over on his website.
What can I say, one post about Friday is seriously not enough. The day lasted around 13hours, where the main focus of the discussions were the internet, google, wordpress, gossip, Moveable Type, Matt’s MySpace account, Apple versus Windows, support forums, relationships, christmas lights and architecture. What was great was the fact that we all could actually talk about this whole other world of people we’re all a part of but no one but us know about.
I thought I was pretty well versed in what was going on in the world of WordPress. I’ve got to say that I’m not the little gossip queen that I actually thought I was. The sheer amount of news I got on Friday was emmense. Little things like Mina from Moveable Type not really liking Matt very much (yeah complete understatement). How some people choose to use WordPress in the craziest and most inventive fashions around.
What was also very interesting is how this meetup brought three groups of people together each battling for their little corner of the WordPress world. Podz as you can imagine was fighting hard for the rights of the casual and individual newbie blogger that didn’t know a mouse from a keyboard. Mike’s promise to get back into active development on the project (although keeping up with Boren might prove to be a mammoth task for anyone to undertake) and finally me fighting for Shuttle.
Upon announcing things Matt was keen to come in on the discussions and help us with tips and tricks about what WordPress users have said or complained about. We thought that stuff would be included in the final design. The current v2.0 beta is a step in the overal direction of Shuttle, however it’s not really there. If you don’t like the shades of blue at the top (that’s not what we designed, but the shades are correct) then you’ve got us to blame. Don’t like the various collapsable tabs on the side, again one of our ideas, so you can blame us. There are lots more things to talk about but that will have to wait for another time closer to when we finish the work around Shuttle.
Shuttle won’t be completed by version 2.0, but I think we’ve all set a target for it to be included in the next iteration of WordPress. Why am I being so public about the timing and everything? A couple of reasons. The first being that by setting myself a deadline we’re all going to be motivated to hitting that deadline. We’ve got a plane to catch, we’re going to be on that plane. I think part of the delay can be attributed to the fact that we didn’t actually have any deadline so things kind of ambled along at their own pace.
The second reason is that this is an open source project. At this stage we can’t really have it open to everyone to comment on because it’ll get nowhere.
One of the more amusing lines used by Matt was “What’s his real name?” To which I responded “oh right, ifelse.co.uk”
Firefox Hacks You Must Have. I’m always on the look out for new and interesting firefox add-ons. The newest one for me (which I’m sure has been around for a while) is DownThemAll.
As I announced this a while back I think it’s important to finish what I started. When I first started writing this post it was actually to say that I wasn’t going to go through with the whole t-shirt thing and that I wasn’t going to be able to produce the designs that I wanted in the way that I wanted to do them, and then highlight the reasons. Strange thing is as I was writing this I realised that I actually still DO want to get this off the ground, so I’ll put my thoughts/ideas/experience on the table and ask for YOUR input, what should I do and where should I go.
Just to record my experience with the guys at StreetShirts. I exchanged around 20 emails or so with the guys over there trying to get to grips with what I’d need and how I could go about getting my designs printed off as t-shirts. My main issue with the t-shirts was the final price that I would attach to them, over
You know you’re kind of on the same wavelength as the person sitting opposite you when you’re both wearing nearly the same jumper and you both carry the same Moleskin notepad with you everywhere. It was actually pretty funny when Matt pulled out his Vaio. Where’s your ibook? He’d actually exchanged it and went back to a PC. I’m surprised he didn’t mentioned that more heavily on his blog, because I remember when he bought his Apple computer, he’ll I remember the picture of the boxes that he took and posted.
Well this is the first London WordPress meetup that I know of and to be honest even if it wasn’t, it’s the first one that’s actually counts :). Started off by me getting to Starbucks and finding Mumbles on his own (with his friend he got to tag along just in case we were all a bit crazy/mad, you know insurance, I’d have done the same but I am a bit crazy/mad). Matt’s no where to be found. So I go look in another Starbucks and asked a random person that looked like Matt if he was Matt,…he wasn’t. Get back to the original Starbucks and Mumbles is talking to Podz; who’s got Matt’s number. I give him a ring, he’s in Heathrow still and reckons he’ll be there in a few minutes…yeah right, he’ll be a while so we all file into a nearby pub.
Podz, Mike, Paul, Mumbles and Frag all sitting around and COMPLETELY GEEKING OUT. It was pretty damn cool. Podz as you would expect pulls no punches. He’s straight in there, ‘What the hell is going on with Shuttle???’ And for the next 30minutes I get grilled as to all the crazy things that Matt and Ryan have decided to put into WP 2.0, soo unfair seeing as when Matt eventually came around he didn’t get the same grilling :).
Lots of food and then took Matt around London, as he’s leaving tomorrow (I think he hated his visit, and I can’t really blame him) so I thought it was important for him to have a look at London properly or at least see some nice things before he left. I’ll post a map at some point. We’re about to go get something to eat and drink when Mike give’s us a ring to see what we’re up to, so we hooked up with Mike again. Right about now I bet Mike’s wishing he NEVER made that phonecall. 3 hours later, a bit more eat and one missed train to Manchester and I’m sitting here with Mike chilling out in my house finding out all sorts of crazy/mad things about life and this world and believe it or not the beginnings of WordPress (which I’ll be sure to post at more length). He’ll be spending the night before heading back up to Manchester.
So I’ll leave you all with a picture worth 200,000 ‘Pressers. The founding fathers of WordPress, Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg.
…meanwhile if you’re interested in what Lois Lane will look like look no further than Just Jared. Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor is easily the best thing they could have possibly done. Inspired casting if you ask me.
In keeping with the X-men theme of late, from Joblo (thanks to The Beat), we’ve got some pictures of all the X-men characters. My favourite is definitely Colossus and as I mentioned before the beast.
Go have a look at it. Yeah I know something you would expect this sort of thing over at Splash Panel but like I said the content there is SOO specific that it just doesn’t fit in there. So checking out this trailer all I can say is that I like the fact that all the characters are back in action. It’ll be fun to see another X-men movie. Having said that there are a couple of things that I thought looked a little weak.
The first being Angel and just how wrong he looks. He’s meant to be soo much more imposing, and yet in this shot looks completely wrong. The casting looks wrong. Just everything looks wrong.
They got the Beast SPOT ON, which originally I was pretty scared they’d screw up, but it seems they spent most of their time sorting out his look and should have maybe spent some time looking at that horrible Angel look. I thought it was nice seeing Colossus in there as well, can’t wait to see him in full metal cladding.
I’ve not heard much about the story, but I’ve got to say that’s the one aspect I’m exceptionally scared of. The story could signal the death of this franchise which would be a shame as I truly enjoyed the first two movies (X2 more than X-men). Here’s hoping for the best, and expecting the worst.
I just realised today how much BAD service in a restaurant can completely fuck up your experience. Even if the meal is as you would expect, bad service will make you reconsider going to the same place again. I’m not talking about the bard ‘rude’ service but more about the completely incompetent service.
Waiting tables is seriously a tough job. It’s an interation with all sorts of people, it’s an form of understanding and it’s a great exercise in both humility and patience. At the same time it’s bandied as though any monkey can do it. It’s true, any monkey can do it but the way in which they do it will also decide whether or not you go there again.
Today we had a waiter that couldn’t answer any of our questions regarding what was on the menu (there was someone who was allergic to nuts so it was pretty important he understood that), didn’t know English, brought the food in two lots (so one half of the people had started while others waited for a good 15minutes), never looked around to see if the restaurant needed anything or if anyone was WAVING at him and calling him for a while, he spilt the soup, took another 15minutes to get the bill and the list goes on.
What’s annoying is that I actually used to like this restaurant. I enjoy the food itself, but even I couldn’t really argue the general sentiment around the table that this was not a place to come again and repeat. I always find it quiet annoying when I have to write off a restaurant. So no Blu Grass until they get rid of that spacker waiter.
Just wanted to announce that Inksmith is now in partnership with Media Temple. Big shout out to both Jason and Chris, for all the work they’ve put into sorting the server and assorted goodies we’re going to need for the future of Inksmith. It’s a great thing for the community to have these guys behind us as hopefully this means we won’t be crying after/once the community achieves the goals we’re hoping it will reach.
I spent yesterday chilling out with Naoto and his family (that Scottish bastard Gordon tagged along as well). While we’re there we decided to do a few google searches (as you do) came up with this fantastic artist’s work, Naoto Hattori
Empire describes it as “Akira for the 21st Century” but watching this movie reminded me more of the mid 90s when I first watched Ghost in the Shell. Sky Blue apparently took 7 years to create. To say it’s spectacular sounds to me like to do a diservice to the amount of painstaking detail that the animators have chored over to create, it’s more than spectacular. I remember when I first saw Ghost in the Shell I was absolutely amazed by the sheer grandness of the design. The animators where having fun showing off this world they’d created. 10 years later the production team behind Sky Blue do one up, and surprisingly the results haven’t come from Japan as you’d expect but rather from Korea. If this is a glimse of things to come from the Korean animation scene, I honestly can’t wait to see what Japan will fight back with, because make no mistake, Sky Blue has set the bar with respect to animation.
The story centres around the city of Ecoban. In a world where no one has seen the colour of the sky, it’s been raining for over 100 years. The existence of Ecoban depends on the work force called the Diggers. Before the catastrophic events that lead to the natural disaster, a certain group anticipated the upcoming downfall. They built Ecoban to make sure that they survived. They locked the doors and didn’t let anyone in. Those stuck on the outside became the diggers. This obviously caused a great deal of hostility between the two groups.
My only gripe with the movie was the weakness of the american voice over actors, who did feel a bit forced. Not as fluid and convincing as I’ve come to expect from my animated endeavours.
I wish I could describe the sheer imagination of the world the animators showed off in this movie, but I think the best way for you to understand is to watch it.
I was planning on keeping this quiet until I’d actually done the design for it and had a few posts under my belt, but alas it’s a good way to keep the interest in the project going, but SplashPanel marks my second blog. The content is VERY specific. It’s going to be about Graphic Novels and every once in a while I might talk about other comic book specific things. I’ve been thinking about this for a while so it’s nice to get going on it. Hopefully I’ll have a design for it in the not too distant future. I know what it needs, it’s just that it will take a good long while to get EVERYTHING on there. Definitely a work in progress but I’ve got very high hopes for it. So if sequential storytelling strikes your fancy mosey on down there.
Firefox 1.5 has been released and they’ve realigned (nooch!) the website as well. It’s not the biggest change by any stretch of the imagination, but still an upgrade is and upgrade, especially to my favourite application.
You might have noticed that I’ve been pretty quiet lately, which is attributed to the fact that I’ve recently been commissioned to redesign an esteemed gentleman’s website. For those who have their ear to the ground know who I’m talking about, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about at right now, I’ll save that post for when the site goes live (sometime next week, I hope). No what I want to talk about is methodology in designing websites.
The Scenario The current client was effectively my dream client. After I sent in my personalised questionnaire which gives me a better idea of what they like and don’t like and what they want and don’t want, I was off. They only got to see the eventual product once I’d finished it. Was it a risk on their part to just give me all this trust? Maybe, but they did come to me rather than any number of the thousands of ‘web designers’ out there and that is what got me thinking about all this in the first place.
The Issue We’re told at a very early stage in life that the client is always right. They have every say in changing stuff around and realigning and asking for tweaks etc, after all they’re footing the bill right? See this is where I don’t agree completely. Yeah loaded statement I know but here’s where I’m coming from before you jump up and down my throat.
In this particular case when looking for getting a website designed you effectively have an incredible amount of choice in front of you to select whom you’d like to get the job done for you. You hunt around and find a designer whose style you like. You decide upon that particular designer because you like what they’ve done. Choosing the designer is effectively the biggest choice you’re going to make. The creative decisions are not yours.
The Play This is where things become interesting; when you were asked to do a design the client put a certain amount of trust in you. I approach each design as if it’s one of my drawings. A lot of effort and time is put into every element on the page. I’ve been doing this for a while now and have a better knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. I’ve spent hours looking and learning from design magazines, books, movies, comics. All the while gaining experience and knowledge from all over the place. I see things differently. The ‘client’ hasn’t spent that time, or doesn’t have that spark to do it, which is why they’ve come to me. They know what they like.
The Spark Different people tackle this area in different ways. I’ve mentioned that I am now calling any website I design as a Broken Kode Original. I find that a lot of people offering web designing services lack that original spark. It’s like that additional element that elevates their work from the rest just doesn’t exist. ‘Web designers’ like that really annoy me. Show me some creativity dammit and stop using the word design as a crutch!
So effectively what I’m saying is that if you ask me to design a website for you, expect to give me a lot of input into what you like and don’t like right at the beginning and then see NOTHING until I’m done. Think of it as a painting, I never show a work in progress because you can’t see what’s in my head until I’ve got it on paper. If you asked me to do it for you, you obviously like what you see and therefore should have enough trust in me to provide you with a quality design.
I would love to get more website design commissions as they’ve not been coming in very often lately. Obviously I’m doing something wrong and not promoting that aspect of my work enough. However at least now I know how I want to approach designing websites that keeps me interested and vibrant. (Aside: Broken Kode will get realigned in the not too distant future)
Well I can definitely tell you it’s not about the money. I don’t need it, my hosting is pretty cheapo-tastic provided by Dreamhost. I haven’t really been able to take advantage of their referral scheme to be honest, someone did use me as their referee and I thank that person greatly for that, but that’s hopefully going to change in the months to come as I start pushing out a couple of Broken Kode Originals (what I’m calling original website designs by yours truely). My day job pays the bills with a little to spare (no I’m not filthy rich, just don’t have any bill headaches at this time in my life).
As far as I can tell no one’s gotten rich completely from subscribing to Adsense. The more and more I read from people claiming that it really wasn’t worth their time etc. So what the hell is the point? In this particular case it’s an experiment. I really want to see how much I can make in a 6 month period. I’ll eventually provide everyone with the results of the experiment as if I was back in Physics class back in school.
Sure I’m making ‘the man’ richer, but I’m getting a small piece of the pie so it’s slightly amicable to my weird sensibilities. It’s funny but not long ago I wrote on the designateonline forum that I refused to put Adsense on the site, and keep it cleaner. I guess never say never, but unless it actually is worth my while I don’t think I’ll be keeping the ads on here.
So I guess we’ll talk further in 6 months time. Hopefully we’ll have some hit numbers on here as well.
Right I’ve Google Adsense on the site (only in one location and far away from the main page, it’s just below the posts in the individual posts pages), just as a test. The problem is the damn thing’s not showing up. Quick question to everyone that uses this service, does it take a while before the ads start popping up? Do I need to confirm my bank account before these things start coming through? I’ll write more elaborately about this later on but I just wanted to know why the script’s not doing anything.
If I didn’t read Business Logs I’d have completely missed this story. Just haven’t really noticed anyone I read actually talk about it. It would seem that the story of the week is the launch some blogging/advertising/network company called Open Source Media, no scratch that, it’s actually called Pajamas Media. Whatever not terribly interested in shoddy businesses, however what made me stop and truely think was the difference between my online collaborative efforts and that of Dennis.
I guess I’ve been truely fortunate in the online collaborations and the quality of people I’ve chosen to jump with head first into these collaborations. While people still fear anyone on the internet, blogging has effectively given people a new medium to both collaborate and help each other, while at the same time truely shaft each other in a spectacular fashion.
I think the only reason I’m enjoying using the internet as much as I am right now can be attributed to the collaborations on projects with various people from around the world. The internet has put me in touch with people that share the same passions and ideas that I would otherwise have not had the chance to experience and by extension been that much poorer.
Would things not go as smoothly if money was involved? I’d really like to think that would not be the case. However I’ve been burnt several times in the past to shoddy characters (wish I did blog back in University because that would have made a terribly interesting read right about now) that I can justify people/myself for being jadded about the whole thing; and yet I’m ALWAYS looking for the next collaboration.
I couldn’t have done any of these projects on my own and neither would I ever want to. I evolved greatly as a designer/coder with each project and more importantly I gained several friends along the way.
I’m not sure if this is just me, but I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with people in the real world not getting it! In this particular case it, being blogging and the internet community/world that has been building and growing for the last good few years. It’s like the general public around me is completely ignorant of everything and anything online. Still reserved to thinking that if you do anything internet related you’re considered a techy geek. Fuck that shit!
It’s a preconception based on ignorance. I know it’s harsh to use such words but it’s true. I still find it amazing when I mention the word blog and the person looks at me and doesn’t have a clue about what I’m talking about. It’s not like I’m asking them to tell me the difference between PHP and HTML or anything ‘technical’ like that. If I dare mention the internet in any capacity apart from amazon, google and hotmail I’m looked upon as I’m a dredge of society while Gmail and Firefox are effectively words I just made up.
Seriously, it’s the same shitty ignorant and stupid look I get when I mention that I read and love comics but that’s another post for another time. I guess part of the problem is that I’m in a completely different industry to the web development one and therefore we can consider these people as the general public. The thing is it’s not like I’m talking to my grandmother here who’s still in awe about the concept of the telephone, these are computer literate people, who get their news from the net, who buy stuff online, who surf and search the web EVERY single day.
It’s not all doom and gloom however, every once in a while I’ll meet someone who’s actually read the site and tell me they like it, or topics I’ve talked about here get further airtime in some conversations I have with a couple of friends. It’s a slow processes getting people to understand what the internet has to offer them apart from spam, buying shit and downloading porn.
You know that you’re getting old, when you’re in a bar/club and Nirvana “Smells like teen Spirit” comes blaring on. You run to catch up with your buddy and you start a mini mosh. People around you are shocked by this crazy and truely uncivilized behvaiour you’re exhibiting. What is this jumping around like an idiot supposed to be? What are you trying to accomplish you idiot?
You’re reliving events from 10 years past. It’s one of the most tiring 3 minutes you’ve experienced in a very long time, but it was also one of the most exhilirating things as well. You sit back and try and relax. God I’m getting old. I put my hands in my pocket; something’s missing. It seems lighter. Where the hell are my keys? Oooohhh shit. They’re in the moshpit!
The title of the post says it all, lots of little things I’ve got on mind I’d like to get out.
The Superman Returns teaser trailer is up and it did give me goosebumps. Mainly the Marlon Brando voice to be honest. The music was completely spot on, created all the atmosphere I could have hoped for. I will echo a couple of comments I’ve heard online about the fact that it doesn’t really look like Metropolis and more like Gotham, but I think that’s just the trailer. My favourite part is easily the jump scene in the fields.
Fables is one of the best series you can read by VERTIGO Comics. It’s written by Bill Willingham and illustrated (most of the time) by Mark Buckingham (who is without a doubt the nicest guy working in comics). I’ve effectively got to write my own little review; in the meantime there’s this excellent review to get into by the Fourth Rail boys and this Podcast by the Comic Geeks.
I don’t want to say much about what we have planned because (to be honest) it’s still in the planning stages (so that answers everyone’s first question), however due to some confusion around the place, I think it’s prudent to address a couple of points and issues regarding InkSmith. Some common rumors making the mill.
Just so that we’re clear. It’s going to be a site focused on the blogger. It’s that simple a concept. This effectively explains why we’ve put our faces on there. What’s important here is not the site or the program running the site. It’s the person behind it. It’s the online blogging community. The plan is to take this virtual playground that we’re all in and making it slightly less electronic. Instill a bit of personality into it. I’m not interested in speaking with SpankMonkey and his ilk. Give me your name dammit, otherwise I’m not really interested in hearing what you have to say. It’s about making the blogging community less hostile to people.
Blogging has introduced me to a slew of people from around the globe, all with similar interests to me, all completely different to each other. People I would never have had a chance to talk to, I now consider my friends. There’s a barrier out there that many people don’t see. Inksmith hopefully will be a step to overcoming that barrier. Will it work? I’m trying very hard not to hype this thing up because it seems net users revel in failure, but I’m optimistic, then again I’m a natural optimist so maybe that’s just something I would say.
Just so as to discard another pre-conception, this isn’t an exclusive club. It’s got a small group of people that are going to build the framework that will hopefully benefit people but make no mistake, the true stars of the site will be the blogging community, both by being a part of the site and providing content for the site itself. So go over to the site and sign up for the newsletter.
Remember that you are an InkSmith.
A while back I talked about what the WordPress community was lacking. Upon reflection I’ve understood that in fact it’s not just the WordPress community that is lacking in a particular aspect, but in fact the blogging world in general.
All that matters is that you are blogging and by default part of movement that’s effectively changed the shape of the internet and how it’s used. You’re no longer just a consumer as many corporations would have you labelled as.
You are now a creator. You are an InkSmith.
Finally got the information regarding how to format your comments sorted out. This has been on my to-do lists since I launched version 4, which is a sad state of affairs to be sure. Special thanks to Joen; well for actually giving me a way that doesn’t look crap, keeping everything nice and clean.
My computer is both one of my favourite tools, link to the outside world, online friends, but at the same time it’s my worst enemy. I actually had to leave the house and go down to one of the two local Starfucks in order to GET AWAY from my computer. In the past I’ve actually turned off the internet (or at least disconnected my computer from the net) in order to get on with other more pressing matters. I’m too weak now to do that, as I listen to music off the internet (via itunes), chit chat and reply to emails inbetween other things.
See the problem is I can actually find a milion and one things to do while I’m on the computer. Continue sorting out my blook, play around with a bit of code, chat to a couple of people about this project or the other. The list goes on. So I’m starting to think about the real reason why I’m not going to get my first graphic novel done any time soon. I’ve actually gotten a way bit through it going via the Collen Doran approach. The way she goes about it is actually drawing multiple pages at any one time. This makes it less of a slog and more interesting not knowning which page she’s going to work on in that particular day. At least that’s my understanding of her approach when producing the excellent ORBITER graphic novel with Warren Ellis.
The main problem that I’m facing right now however is the fact that in order to complete these various projects, seeing my friends has actually taken a hit. You can’t possibly get anything done if you keep going out, but at the same time if you don’t go out then your inspiration will be for nothing. However the fact of the matter is unless you sit your ass down and get on with the work then you’ll never get anywhere.
There are a number of getting things done websites all over the blogosphere. Some of the advise presented in these sites is very sound, however I find that I completely forget the advise and get back to my rubbish habits that don’t squeeze every waking second with some productivity. That’s actually when I start getting headaches. Nearly four years ago I suffered some serious headaches for a prolongued period of time, roughly 2 months solid, due in part to the physcological pressure that I decided to put myself under to try and get things done NOW. Also I’ve yet to find a proper PIM(Personnal Information Manager) that I can actually use, but I’ll be talking about that in the near future in much more detail.
I’ve been sketching all day practically. I actually left the house in order to give myself a fighting chance away from my computer. So I headed down to Starfucks and got a number of sketches done for the Broken Kode Blook. Now when I sketch I’m very focused. You could move heaven and earth and I’m none the wiser, so practically nothing can distract me, except my computer.
So later on in the day I’m sitting in the living room with the guys as they watched the Chelsea v. Manchester United match, and during the half-time intermission an ad for the new Sony Bravia came one that actually made me look up. The reason was the music in the background. Now once they had my attention they rewarded me with arguably one of the best adverts I’ve seen in a good long while. Go have a look.
Now after watching it I thought, well that’s some pretty special CGI effects they’ve got going here. Joke’s on me it would seem, as the advert is completely real. How long did it take them to clean all the balls up? 250,000 balls. One of my favourite aspects is the frog. Brilliant footage.
The director is one Danish Nicolai Fuglsig. Damn those Danes, what is it about that country pumping out talented folk? The song is by José González.
The comic landscape wil change in the years to come. Historically when a comic book fan had an idea and wanted to do a comic they would set about doing it sometimes putting the actual things together, photocopying A4 pages and stapling them together themselves. These things would be called minicomics Quality varied considerably and usually wasn’t all that great. Truth be told I’ve never bought a mini-comic. My problem is the actual lack of quality involved in these things.
When I first started this blog, part of it was to chronicle my journey into getting my graphic novel published, of course I’ve not actually finished said graphic novel but it’s getting there. Now when I originally decided to set across this path, there were no alternatives save self publishing or going to various publishers to try and get them to pick up my book.
A few months afterwards Cafepress decided to roll out their book publishing division. This was to my knowledge one of the first ventures into print on demand models over the internet. I was extremely excited about the prospect of having my book published no matter what. Distribution would have to be relegated over the internet, however this wasn’t something that I was completely unimpressed by.
Now there are so many different ways of publshing opening up all over the place. Lulu seems to be the one to beat since they’ve decided to expand their reach to just the internet. There are of course restrictions to what can and can’t be distributed (which is oddly based on the type of book being printed i.e B&W versus colour), however the doors are open for anyone to grab a hold of this model and run with it.
Comic book ditribution is a niche affair. If you want something specific you need to go via a comic book retailer. While I like my comic book retailer they don’t stock everything. They never offer me a discount on ANYTHING, and the store seriously isn’t a welcome place like it was in Greece, where the comic book store was effectively a home away from home, so I don’t really care if I buy the books from them or not.
What the comic book store does provide however is a means to browse and let something JUMP AT YOU. It’s a very important part of buying books. Something will catch your eye. It could be the design, it could be the cover artist, it could be the title that grabs you. The flip through test is the second most important part of the process. Most books fail in this respect and are returned back to the shelf. A more virtual method of browsing is no doubt going to be developed in due time that makes browsing titles a little more intuative with normal practice. Stubbling onto something by mistake should be easier. The consisness of the search feature can be a bad thing at times.
Now the online distribution method is one that’s still in it’s infantile stage. The professional comic book creators have yet to jump onto this model. At least I’ve heard sweet fuck all about this being something very successful in the comic book industry. Since I can only see from my back yard I’ll say that seeing as I’ve not yet bought an online graphic novel this model hasn’t taken off, since I’m ALWAYS on the hunt for good books. I would love to find a gem here or there, however the ones I’ve been looking at online are not of the quality that I’d expect from a comic I’d pay for under normal circumstances. I know that’s being seriously harsh, however I will say that I’m also one of the easiest person to get to buy a well produced graphic novel.
There are ways of making it work (an article for another time) and I believe those people who are the early adopters maybe haven’t tapped into that way just yet.
Character Design Blog is an amazing collection of interviews and profiles of some serious character designers around there. I’m ALWAYS looking for inspiration, especially now going through Broken Kode | Season One blook.
It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s one of the best feelings I get when it comes along. I’ve got a theory, hell I’ve got loads of theories most of them just meant to get a rise out of people and start a conversation. This particular theory isn’t a theory as such but more of an observation. You realise they’re your friends when you’ve actually gotten
Fruitcast has gone live. Mr.Kartooner himself and I helped out with the copy of the site. Hell I’m sold on the concept that it makes me actually think that I should give this podcasting thing a whirl, whereas before I had little interest. Sounds like pretty easy money.
Gorillaz toys from Kidrobot. These things are absolutely MASSIVE. The main problem being that they’re terribly expensive, which didn’t stop me from buying a Russel figure today. Easily some of the best inaction figures I’ve seen since the brilliant View Askew ones from a couple of years ago.
After hammering this a couple of times (and in the process getting an even better understanding of exactly what makes PHP tick), I’ve formatted the snippets to be part of the main posts. This is mainly to give these random ideas of mine a home, that don’t necessarily require a full post, but also shouldn’t be relegated to the bottom of the page. This’ll hopefully mean more random geekiness from me in the future, or at least that’s the plan Batman.
Today marks the end of Ramadan for the year 2005. Just wanted to wish all those who have just finished their fasting or are about to finish their last day of fasting in a little while’s time EID MUBARAK (loosely translated you can think of this as Arabic for MERRY CHRISTMAS). I’ve got to say that the first 3 weeks went by without me really noticing anything different about my habits, however the last 1 week has been very tough on me.
I guess that’s mainly a psychological effect of wear and tear. It’s bound to happen, as the month starts off with a lot of energy and enthusiasm for the event, and then towards the twilight of the month, it’s a bit more of a slog to get through the day. What made this day slightly harder was I was hoping that yesterday would have been the last day, to my disappointment. It’s like running the marathon (not that I’ve done that), finishing, and then someone telling you that there’s another km to complete the task at hand.
Think of this as a public service announcement. If you’re one of the people that says ‘well D’uhhh’ at the end of reading this post I wish you’d shared this information with me earlier i.e 20-something years ago, instead of keeping it to yourself.
While talking to Eric tonight he told me he was feeling a little under the weather, to which I replied that he wasn’t ‘taking care of himself’. He told me that he felt he was a healthy young lad. Not what I was talking about. Apparently (and I never put two and two together), we’re always carrying some sort of flu, or cold or whatever around with us.
The only way this illness manifests itself into all those great things well all love (runny noses, fevers, fatigue etc), is when we don’t take care of ourselves. What that effectively means is when we wear t-shirts when we really should be wearing a jumper. Not changing clothes after gym and going out in the cold. Not sleeping properly and not eating properly. Effectively neglecting our bodies for that brief period of time while we dealt with something much more important in our lives at the time. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself when the shit hits the fan.
So as the winter is closing in us, make sure you take yourself, otherwise don’t come crying to me. I tried, which is a lot more than I can say to all those people out there that kept this bit of information to themselves.
This posts marks my 500th post for this little site. In the comic book industry this number is a massive one that only a handful of titles have ever achieved. Although not even close to that sort of achievement, it’s nice to attain this milestone in the life of a website, that was only meant to be as an easy method to update the news section of my portfolio site.
The site was originally set up to chronicle the road to getting published in the comic book industry. which is kind of fitting that I can recount the following story at this time:
One of the traditions on a lazy Sunday for me is to go around 3 o’clock to the local newsstand and check out the different design magazines and what not. I’ve not renewed my subscription to Computer Arts, mainly because of the old editor-in-chief who in my view ruined the magazine. I’ll be checking out the magazine now that someone else seems to be at the helm. So I’m checking what’s on offer, and I picked up Practical Web Design. I’ve never picked up this magazine in my life, as I generally tend to gravitate towards Computer Arts, Digit, Digital Creative and Creative Review.
So I started flicking through the magazine, and I get to a featured called ‘Build Quick CSS Templates’. The double page spread had several websites screen shots repeated a few times throughout both pages. As I started looking through the page for inspiration I noticed something very familiar. You can imagine the little girly scream I let out when I saw Broken Kode in there as well! My humble little site has seen print as well now.
Joen, you’ll be pleased to know that Noscope was featured in there as well. Could the guilty party who gave us this little bit of exposure PLEASE STAND UP :).
I always complete my projects. The only problem is that I generally take a little longer than I’d like to, but my problem is that I have too many ideas and not enough time in the day to get around to giving these projects their proper time. As I’m not really happy doing a half-assed job on something they take a bit longer than usual.
I’ll be doing my next workshop post in the coming week to discuss the plugins section. Things have slowed down again on that front, but it goes through dribs and drabs. Nothing to worry about. It’ll take as long as it takes and will be great when it’s done.
Yeah like I was going to forget this little project. Hardly. This weekend I spent a good portion of it formating the first year of posts into a book. I’ve got a lot of ideas for this one to make it special, but I don’t want to talk about it in too much detail now as I want to keep it for when the book is complete and at Lulu. I’ve enjoyed creating the look of this book as anything else I’ve worked on in the past year. Within one day I’ve been able to go from a 100 page open office file, to 300 pages of formatted pdf goodness. If I get everything done correctly then Season One will be much more than a Blook. I will enter it for consideration into the Blooker Prize. The biggest buzz for me will be having a book in my dirty little hands with my name on the spine.
What’s been interesting is going through and spell checking everything. My god there are some serious errors in there. I’ve not changed any words in there, just corrected the spelling. There’s a reason for that as well, which will make the final product very different and more than just a collection of blog posts.
You thought I’d forgotten hadn’t you? For all those in the dark, I mentioned a while ago that I was interested in doing a WordPress Portal. Well now it’s a Blogging Portal. I will hopefully be talking more about this sometime later this week. It will be something focused on the community and while the start of it will be closed to a select number of people, I want to make sure people understand that the portal will be open for everyone and will have a focus on the end user rather than a specific product/tool etc.
The best thing I’ve gotten from the 9rules network isn’t the exposure. Sure I’ve gotten some steady exposure from there, however the best thing is the interaction with the other members of the network. I’ve met some seriously cool people, many of which which I’ll be working with in the coming years for sure. I’m hoping that this portal will be able to bring people closer together and enhance their blogging experience.
Well this one I’ve actually told absolutely no one about except obviously the person that’s my partner in crime, one AvalonSTAR. Still very early days, and I don’t want to mouth off before we’re a bit more into this project. It’s a slow burner but I’m extremely excited about it. Think outside the box.
Reyyy is an excellent example of why comic book art is well above and beyond the traditional art bandied about by graphic designers. Learn how to use a pencil people.
Brian Wood’s new website is online. Brian’s definitely got a destinct style, both in his writing, drawing and design work. Whatever you do make sure to check out his excellent CHANNEL ZERO graphic novel. One of my TOP 11 picks of all time.
I’ve finally sorted out the gallery section of Broken Kode. This has been on the backburner for nigh on 2 months now, with the only reason I can give for the delay being that I couldn’t decide on the final format for the gallery. Originally I was actually waiting for Zenphoto so that I could incorporate the functionality in there for my needs (thumbnails, navigation between images etc). Unfortunately, although a very nice package, I’m not proficient enough in php (yet, something I’m hoping to rectify in the near future) to be able to hack the thing to my needs, and with the lack of an extensive online resource (much like WordPress’s Codex), I was effectively fighting a loosing battle.
I thought about going for a Flash solution, however again this would bring about the problem of me not updating the section on a regular basis. I needed to go to a very simple CMS type solution. After bashing my head for 2 weeks now, I decided to use my default WordPress install, and just HACK it to death. The truth of the matter is that I’ve only touched one file from the core WordPress files, so hacking to death is a gross overstatement. I’ve just used plugins and hacks set out by others.
Much in the same was as I’ve done with the main site I’ll be modifying things slowly but surely till I get it the way I want it, so hopefully now I can concentrate on content only rather than spending far too many hours design, coding and then going through the process all over again. This final look was done in one evening, after I’d spent the better part of 1 week going back and forth with what I wanted. Part of the design was remove ANY clutter that would distract from the images themselves, so simplicity is the operative word here. Grab the RSS feed to stay up to date with this section of the site.
As a matter of interest for all those looking for Flash based solution to their gallery needs here’s a pretty extensive list of solutions that came my way on my hunt:
This particular image was used in the promotion of the Manji theme nearly 1 year ago. Part of the inspiration for this piece was creating my first bit of software for the Open Source community. I combined a mechanical element (in the android) with the more organic element of the bird, which serves two purposes. One to signify freedom, while the other shows the intergration between man and machine.
Stephen King’s Graphic Novel. Not really ‘news’, merely a confirmation of a promo that was released by Marvel back in July.
It’s only natural for people to be getting sick of the term that’s plastered on the interent EVERY SINGLE DAY. Yes, this post in part will be about the crazy little buzz word, Web 2.0. I hate that term:"(So we’ll not use it again, in the future that word will be replaced with ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)":
It’s being thrown around the blogosphere like crazy. I guess I’m one of those crazy fools out there that believes in the future, that we won’t be paying for software. There will be an operating system that compliments everything we do, there will be software that will be far more advanced than anything you can buy, and the development will be ongoing, constant and open to everyone. I’m a firm believer in Open Source software.
At this particular moment in time we’ve been caught off guard. The Web applications are fresh and new now, so obviously they’re going to be gaining some momentum and money. In 5 years time (hopefully much less) all of the 37 Signals applications will be available to the end user in the form of an open source project. If people want to have those programs on their systems without paying a monthly fee, they’re more than welcome to do so, and can get at the code and do whatever they want as well. It’s only a matter of time. People will be paying for the work, the service rather than the software.
The reason I mention the 37 Signals programs in particular is because I started using Backpack this weekend. I’ve got an account from when it was first released, however I never really got into it. I’ve added yet another project to the stuff I’m working on. This one is with Bryan Veloso and we’re both thinking what the hell took us so long.
5 years ago this collaboration would have been possible, but it wouldn’t have been as easy and clear to follow as it is now, thanks to Backpack. I’m even considering buying a basic account. That’s pretty big thing since I just haven’t gotten into that whole ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ thing. If you’re collaborating on the interent (and you really should it’s an amazing resource to waste on porn) this application will make things more fun for sure.
Now I’m just waiting for the time when we actually can host this on my server. Anyone working on a Backpack alternative (with Whiteboard of course).
So I’m in front of the Greek Embassy yesterday, trying to get myself a visa to go back down to Greece to see my folks:"(I was raised in Greece, my brother was born there and neither of us have the Greek citizenship. I’ll be sure to write a proper post in the future about the reasons why I hate the Greek Government)": , and it decides to seriously start pissing it down:"(Raining heavily in English-English )": . Luckily the Greek embassy has foreseen this and given those poor hapless souls some form of shelter as they’re waiting outside the embassy to hide from the rain right? Wrong. I’m usually prepared for this sort of thing and never leave the house without the proper equipment (umbrella, moleskin, panadol, pen, etc). at 8:30 in the morning there was only 2 people out there, me and a girl from Columbia. It’s amazing how being stuck in the same shitty situation can make people bond together and break down any communication barriers in a matter of seconds. We’re huddled under two umbrellas (mine began to leak, that’s how heavy the rain was). Though we’d both have rather been somewhere else, anywhere else, we were both glad that someone else was suffering in the same way (my feet are still wet from yesterday). We were not alone.
Which kind of brings a lot of things/actions we do out of behavioral attributes in our makeup. Arup engineered the Millennium bridge in London. When it was first launched it was unstable. Fair enough. The problem you see was that Arup hadn’t anticipated people marching in step over the actual bridge which caused it to vibrate.
Another behavioral action I’ve noticed and I can’t for the life of me explain, and think why? Next time you see someone with an umbrella, notice the little flap that hangs out that ties the umbrella together when it’s closed. I guarantee that flap will be in the front left (relative to the person). It won’t be dangling towards the back or right but to the front and left hand side. Then you’ll have a look at how you’re holding your umbrella, and you’ll notice the same thing. Weird.
And no the thing with the embassy didn’t go smoothly, since now he wants a paper from my dad saying I’m going to stay over at his house when I go over. The retarted nature of these fuckers really NEVER ceases to amaze me.
Top 10 Places to Find Free Images For Your Blogs. This one’s for me, since I know I’ll forget about it, but I should use this resource more.
Saw this movie last week, but due to various problems, it’s taken this long to talk about. Just to warn everyone, MAJOR SPOILERS COMING UP. If you’ve not seen this yet, and actually care about the story, turn away now. Don’t look further, just go read something else.
Right from the start of this movie you could tell this was going to be a good Sci-fi flick. The smaller-than-usual-budget-for-a-sci-fi-movie (apparently $40 million) however does come through in the lack of overly elaborate sets. This was arguably the one aspect that did make the movie seem less fit for the big screen than anything else (i.e lack of big name Hollywood actors etc). Although the story does journey to different locales, the real life sets were less than spectacular.
That isn’t to say that it’s a cheepo movie. Money has been spent on this film. This movie would have been the best Firefly episode ever made. The CGI used here was superb, and there were shocks, spills and revelations. I enjoyed seeing the worlds that Firefly/Serenity inhabit. That aspect has always been missing from Sci-fi TV series. Battlestar Galactica does do a gallant job of trying to rectify this situation, in that the sets don’t look the same from one shoot to the next, however BG doesn’t really show much in way of new worlds, so they don’t need to spend much money on the CGI.
For me although Kaylee was originally my favorite character, she quickly turned to my number 2 or 3, as River easily took over that role towards the end of the Firefly show. With the Serenity movie she’s established herself as the number 1 character of the show, by a long way. Apart from the fact that I’m completely gone on Summer Glau, she’s also the quirkiest character there. I’d question whether she looks 17, however it seems that the youth of America need to be told that they have to look like 25 year olds. Can anyone say Beverly Hills 90210?
Starting from the beginning young-River, looks NOTHING like the older version. IMHO that’s easily the worst casting of the movie. Not that the little girl was a bad actress (like a certain mini-skywaker), but she just wasn’t a good match. This was more than made up for by giving River the best scenes and the best lines.
If I hadn’t watched Firefly, I’d say that not enough information was given about Book, and his death meant little to the audience that were not familiar with the movie. Same goes for Wash. Good way to end his life on screen however:
The Operative is a suitably evil bad guy, although I’d question Mal’s decision not to kill him on several occasions. His opening scene is one I’ll remember for a while. Just the coldness of his actions are pulled off very well. I never cringed once when I saw him on scene, which I generally do when I see the ‘typical bad guy’.
Inara didn’t get much time on screen, which is a crying shame as she does a very good job of challenging Mal’s authority/ideas and plans. I’m glad they progressed that aspect of the relationship, even by the slightest amount.
The revelation of the Reavers was another great little gem of storytelling, as we’ve always been led to believe that they’re just humans gone wrong of their own accord. Always nice when you get a payoff to watching something for an extended period of time (think Babylon 5). It’s also very cool to see them more up close. It just adds a certain brutality to the show, and gives it a bit of an edge.
As a Firefly fan, I was impressed by the overall package of a movie it was. I’m still on the fence about whether or not it truly required a full length feature movie in the cinema, as something deep down felt like it just didn’t belong there. The Firefly fans are going to take a lot from it than anyone else that’s for sure.
Just as a side note, if you’re interested in finding out what exactly happened in the 6 months between the end of Firefly and the start of Serenity (i.e why Inara and Book left), then check out the upcoming Serenity mini-series in trade paperback from Dark Horse (it’s written by Joss Whedon and apparently very well drawn, I’ve only scoped out the covers which are brilliant).
Can someone please explain to me why oh why people in London insist on wearing scarves in the autumn, when it’s no less than 20 °C ? I mean honestly, has style over content got to such a degree that people are so overly keen to wear a god damn scarf? The straw that broke the camel’s back was seeing this woman on the tube today. Wearing a sleeveless jumper, and a massive fucking scarf? I mean honestly what the hell is that all about? My arms get really warm, however I’ve got chronic neck cold spells?
I noticed this a few weeks ago (when it was even warmer) and just laughed it up, now it’s just annoying. So I’m thinking is this a London thing (because there are some seriously pretentious twats running around here or has this scarf phenomenon leaked to other parts of the world? What the hell are they going to be wearing when it’s actually cold, bear skins?
It was my hard drive. Bastard thing melted on me, well not literally but you get what I mean. I’ve wasted around 1 and a half weeks of work on this. I’ve got a laundry list of projects that have effectively been put on hold while I sorted out this rubbish. I now know a hell of a lot more about my machine than I did a week ago. Hell until a week ago I’d not even opened the damn box to have a peek inside, that’s how completely and utterly uninterested I am in what’s inside the box, as long as it does stuff for me. So clean install, I’m making a list of essential applications I can’t live without.
I’m looking for a decent CSS editor. Currently I just use Programmers Notepad, but there has to be a decent open source application out there that makes my life slightly easier. There are several proprietary ones that seem to be ok, but I like open source things (except operation systems it would seem). Anyone have an mature applications to recommend?
Think of this as a complete and UTTER bargain. This is your chance to own Broken Kode. Hell I’ll even throw in the hosting for the rest of the year. According to Central Scrutinize if you extrapolate all those crazy numbers that have been thrown around the internet after the AOL buy-out of Weblogs Inc, then this little url is the most expensive url in the 9rules network. So much like Phu, I’m calling in my chips, calling it a night, and putting the site up for sale. Even though it’s priced at $2M plus, I’m feeling happy this evening, so $1M should be ok. Anyone interested can just send me a check.
Most of those links are coming from Rin and Manji users. I’ve talked about this extensively before so once again, all those who have kept the link in there, thank you kindly. All those who have linked back to BK just because, again thanks guys. Which reminds me I’ve got to sort out my blogroll. It’s on my list of things to do, once I’ve got my complicator up and running again.
What’s really funny is I don’t even want to imagine what Binary Bonsai or Photomatt would go for. Yes they’re both linked like CRAZY.
Every once in a while I’ll go into one of my many Art and Design Havens and come out with something inspirational. Chromophile by Brandon Ragnar Johnson is nothing short of spectacular. The man has a very similar style to Rian Hughes (whom I’m a massive fan of), but with an added twist and sense of humour; I’m specifically referring to his Monkey series, so if you get a chance to see the book on the shelf, flick through it to see what I mean.
As we continue to use the computer and software within to create art and design, the traditional explanation of the word art will have to morph, at least in the minds of people. Digital art should not be regarded as anything less or secondary in nature to physical artwork. The illustrations I’ve enjoyed working on the most, are the ones that combine both the physical, raw nature of a pencil and pen and the sleek, flawless nature of the computer. The computer should never be a crutch to creating art.
One of my favourite techniques that he uses extensively is using the open space as part of the drawing and having the viewer complete the lines in their heads. It’s a much used trick in comic books, usually in dark spaces (see Sin City for extensive use of this technique). His introduction to the actual book is also very pointing.
People have asked me how I can call pieces that are made by a machine “Fine Art”. I didn’t. You did. And the machine didn’t make them, I did.
I’ve had better weeks, I know I have. I think this week easily ranks up there are one of the worst week for me this year. Started off on Friday of last week when my computer started to die on me. This was augmented by the fact that I had to clock in some extra hours in the office over the weekend and for the first 3 days of the week, before my boss tells me the deadline we’ve been working towards (yesterday) was moved back for 2 weeks. Great, busting my ass for no fucking reason and ruining a weekend and half a week is not my idea of fun. I’ve got better things to do on a weekend, honest I do, like waxing my fucking eyebrows.
Then the god damn northern lines decides that it doesn’t want to work. What’s annoying is that a general journey that should take no more than 20minutes, now takes a good hour and 15minutes. It’s completely ridiculous.
So I go and get a new harddrive, only to open it and find out that in actual fact it doesn’t have a power input? WTF is going on? Are the computer gods against me? Now I’ve got to go back in tomorrow, and hope the store is open for me to replace the damn thing, obviously minus some handling fee to restock the fucking thing!!!!
Last week my computer decided to die on me. I’ve been having problems with it for about a month now, and everythings pretty much come to a head this last week. First it decided to take 15 minutes to load up. I formatted the damn thing (luckily due to it’s brainfart last month I’d made copies of my files, just lost a week’s worth of work). Problem persisted.
Took the harddrive into work, got Franchesco to clean it up properly, gave it a FAT32 partitioning (didn’t realise that windows doesn’t allow you to partition the harddrive if it’s more than 32GB, strange but true), so reformatted NTFS this time, works a charm. Great. Load, shut off, load, shut off a couple of times to ensure that all is working ok. Load up a couple of programs (mainly open source stuff, will make a list of essential programs once I’ve got this problem sorted out).
Wake up this morning, won’t boot, gives me the following error message: windows root\system32\ntoskrnl.exe Re-install a copy of the above file.
I mean seriously WTF. I could give a rats ass what’s in my computer. I really could. It’s a tool to do things. I don’t care whether or not it’s the latest this that or the other. All I care about is that it aids me in accomplishing my thoughts properly. I shouldn’t be having to deal with this rubbish right now, and yet I find myself in this particular situation.
It’s not the harddrive. It might be the BIOS, but I have no idea, what the fucking BIOS is, and how to just get them all to be factory settings. Should I just change my harddrive and everything will be ok? See the problem is that I had a buddy bring in a harddrive, unfortunately my drive uses an SATA lead, rather than an ATA lead (I know that after this past week).
Installing the Maxtor software doesn’t seem to recognise the damn drive for repairing it (primary, secondary whatever not found).
See I never EVER want to write a post like that, simply because I don’t care about the inner workings of the computer. Seriously. I did that at University, and hated it. I’m even thinking of switching completely to linux right now, except there are several programs that I really can’t live without.
I’ve been flying without a computer for a week now. It’s been incredibly difficult and has actually stopped all development on a slew of projects that I’m working on right now.
I’m really excited about Flock. For those in the dark it’s a new browser that’s intended for bloggers. The program is based off the Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine, which is what Firefox is based on. In fact the guys and gals behind Flock were part of the development team behing Firefox. Since Firefox is an Open Source program, in the open source world this fork is not an uncommon thing. In fact in most cases it’s inevitable. There are many examples. The simplest being the hundreds of Linux distros (ubuntu after Debian etc) showing how different people have different thoughts about doing something, and so they fork. Other examples include:
Honestly I could go on. From the above examples what’s clear is that sometimes forks do provide a better product in the end. That’s the beauty of Open Source. I do find it crazy that this would happen so soon, however I can’t wait to see what this application can offer above Firefox. The ‘fox is easily my most used application. In fact when coming onto ANY new PC, the first thing that’s downloaded is Firefox, so it’s going to have to be something special for me to part ways and use the alternative. Any which way you cut it, this will be better for the end user, as the teams will no doubt be feeding off what each other are up to. Is the market oversaturated? Screw that, it’s all about freedom of choice.
On a completely different note, I’ve got to say that I’m seriously loving the Flock logo. I didn’t think anything could top the excellently designed Hick’s Firefox logo, by the Bryan Bell Flock logo is a good contender for the title.
Just putting my thoughts in one place to check up on later.
I’m currently experiencing my first hardware meltdown. If you remember I had a bit of trouble a while back with my windowz box. It seems that problem was more hardware induced than software, as now I get a blue screen straight away, and installing Linux on the box does nothing either. It’s weird because it works fine when I format and install the OS (windowz or linux) but once I shut the computer off and turn on, that’s it locks up.
Tomorrow taking it with me to work (which should be great fun) for Franchesco (my knight in shining armour) to take a look at it. I’m crossing my fingers that it’s just a faulty harddrive. I can deal with being £40 down, just hoping it’s not my mother board.
Currently writing this off my 4 year old laptop, which is a COMPLETE workhorse. It’s slow as arse, but at least it works, and I’ve never had this sort of problem with this machine. The screen is dead, but I believe that’s just the cable so I’ll probably sort that out after I’ve got my proper computer done.
Also I’m investing in an external harddrive as well. Those things are easily worth their weight in gold.
I’ve finally gotten round to sorting most of the details out with Streetshirts, now it’s a question of modifying the designs (I’ll be sure to explain everything later on) and sorting out the actual shop itself. Anyone know any slick looking/operating ecommerce package software that allows you to track things? The actually buying would happen from the Streetshirts site (for the time being), in the future I might (depending on whether the sales model supports that) integrate that into my site proper, but that’s for another time.
I’ve been slowly tinkering around with Saida for the past couple of days (before the meltdown). The main thing that I’ve been working to sort out properly is the Gallery section. I’m still trying to decide on what I want to use to power the thing. While Zenphoto is a great application and has a lot going for it , there are things that I just can’t manipulate it to do. I’m not that knowledgeable with PHP. I think I understand most of what Tristan has done, funnily enough, it’s just a question of understanding how to do it what I need it to do. I completely understand it’s in beta, and to be honest I actually delayed getting stuck into any other system because I really wanted to use this one, but alas I might have to look elsewhere, since I really want to avoid a flash system. Not for anything other than the fact that unless it’s got a cms, I won’t be up for updating it. I know how lazy I am when it comes to this sort of thing. I don’t want to give myself ANY excuses. Specifically:
I’ve got a couple of sites I’ll be playing around with in the next couple of weeks, mainly by buddy Stathi’s website and my brother’s website. I guess both of those are slow burners as I’m not getting paid by the bastards, hell I’m even hosting the damn sites, but I enjoy reading them and I actually had a couple of really good ideas for the sites to mirror the content itself. Stylistically they will be completely different to things I’ve done in the past, and very different from each other as well.
In terms of paying jobs I’m just getting into the coding for Alfonso’s website as well. I didn’t actually design this site, just commented on the design in general and put it all together and got the man some hosting for his start up company. I’ll be writing about that in the future when I’ve completed and finished the design for it.
Then I’ve got a random blog design, which will not be something I put too much time into, however could be something I build a cheap blog design business model out (money is tight on this one). I’m speaking aloud here, and things might not pan out, but I’ve got a couple of ideas, but as I’ve found out, ideas are easy to come by, implementation takes serious time and effort.
Shuttle is chugging along, I generally do work on this in bursts. So I think I’m due for another burst. Once this project is completed then I’ll be able to jump in with both feet into that little protal idea I talked about a while back. It’s funny but the more I think about it the more excited I get about what it can actually be. I’ll be calling in EVERYONE for help and support, but the aim is for the site to be the defacto first place ‘Pressers will be going to, I know big words, but I’ve got an idea (heh where have I heard that one before).
There’s been a lot of noise about blogging networks around the place. People selling and buying them:
while others are launching them:
Personally all I see them as is another way to make money from adverts or more specifically, they’re sites set up to create revenue off advertising. They can try and make you believe that it’s all about the content. Erm yeah, bullshit. It’s about the money. If you really cared about that particular subject then you would simply create a blog or a site, as thousands do every day, and you’d start talking about it. You could build a following based on the quality of your posts.
You might get more exposure from posting on a blog that’s part of a network, yes, but it’s not yours. In my mind the generic blogs written by 30 people effectively eliminates the writer from being the important part and puts the blog itself as the thing in people’s mind. So you’re not effectively getting any accolade, or recognition since you’re not the star of the show, hell you’re not even the sidekick., you’re just a cog in the machine. I hear you say, ‘Oh but Khaled, you’re part of a network!’
Yes that’s right, a network which has absolutely no power over what I write, how often I write it, what I do with my content, and no copyright over anything I write. 9rules is a very very different model. It’s about the individual. Your words, your copyright, your content. What has 9rules done for me you ask? Well for a start it’s introduced me to a range of quality blogs that I otherwise would never read or visit. It’s put me in touch with a host of extremely talented people that help each other out whenever we can. It’s what the word network means when implemented. Has it made me rich beyond my wildest dreams? No, I’ve gotten absolutely no monetary compensation or revenue from being part of the network. Then again it never claimed it was going to give me any money, nor would I expect it to. Mike’s written about this as well.
So I’m sat hear thinking (amongst other things) why anyone would want to write for a blogging network. Seriously. What the hell are you getting from it? You don’t get to keep the content and use it later on or whatever as you please. You don’t own the site domain, you’re effectively working for someone who will then sell the damn network to AOL for $20 million. Oh and what do you get for helping to build this ‘empire’? 10 cents a post or whatever the numbers eventually come out as (it differs from network to network).
It takes a lot of time and effort to build a reputable site of any description talking about a specific topic. It takes hours of hard work and dedication, and crucially consistency.
The only way in my mind to make things better is to actually and that’s to pull away from the blog looking arrangement that these networks seem to be intent on, and actually showing either a picture or an avatar for the writer, as if he’s writing a column of some sort. Each contributor should have their own page that tells a bit about them and if they’ve got their own page a link back or something like that.
Which brings up the design of the blasted things. Why the hell are they all so god damn boring? I mean seriously, how can a site on diabetes have the same design as a site on night clubs? There’s little to NO character to these sites. The site have no face.
I don’t get it. Paul’s created a network and as he’s said anyone can do it, it’s not hard; but then again what the hell is the point, apart from the money. I can understand the need for people to talk about different subjects. I know for one I’d like to have a political blog, the previously mentioned WordPress portal, and a comic book site, but I’d rather invest the time and effort to nurture something of my own. If I find like minded people that want to contribute to the site, then that’s great, some form of compensation should be delivered (this could be monetary or otherwise). Not sure how to view Pauls' Network, as he’s thinking about writing 50 posts a day, across his entire network. It’s definitely one way of giving the sites some character, although I fear that momentum cannot possibly be maintained by one person without a complete breakdown in quality of content. Unless the posts are one liners with a couple of images and a link, in which case why would anyone read the sites?
This mentality to pump out content for sake of it really does degrade the reading experience, at least in my eyes. So no I don’t read any network blogs. I read WorkBoxers (but that’s Scriv’s thing really).
CUBE Creative My new favourite multimedia/animation studio to watch. Check out the 7Tones 2 short video. So brilliant.
I’m going to do you two favours with this post, so I’m hoping you all send some love my way. This can be in the shape of money donations or buy me something from Amazon, I’m not too fussy. The two things I’m going to save you are TIME, which as we all know we don’t have enough of and some of your hard earned CASH.
DO NOT, under ANY circumstance go and watch the new Guy Ritchie, pile of stinking, tumor-inducing, shitty excuse for what he’s calling his new movie, Revolver. Don’t bother watching this on DVD, don’t watch it when it’s on TV eventually, don’t watch it if a friend comes over and the only other thing on TV is some reality TV program, DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. This isn’t one of those reviews where they’ll be very cool and include it in the packaging (like Fight Club).
I thought about this and the problem is that Guy Ritchie actually thinks he’s as good as Quentin Tarantino. The two previous movies I’ve seen by Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking barrels and Snatch) were both very enjoyable affairs. Revolver on the other hand can only be described as that bit of food that’s stuck in between your teeth, that decides to come out 3 days later.
It’s not that the acting was bad, because it wasn’t. The actors read their lines and did their thing. I can’t really fault the camera work, or the sets or the music, which were all pretty well done as well. Unfortunately what was really lacking in this movie was the fact that both the actual writing/dialog and direction were both truly sub par. Endless reams of self-analytical bullshit, compressed into this stream of drivel, that make you go,‘WTF did he just say?’ In fact the closest approximation I can give you in terms of how bad it got, was the dialog in the 2 Matrix sequels.
Yeah, that bad, honest, I wouldn’t be going on like this if it wasn’t.
I suppose it’s because I’m a fan of his previous work, that I feel like he cheated me of a decent movie here. The core concept and ideas if were given to Tarantino would be brilliant. And another thing, why would you do an animation in a movie (and a bad one at that) so close to Kill Bill? I mean at least that scene had a purpose, nearly a year since I saw that scene I can still tell you about it. I only saw this animated sequence yesterday and I can only remember one small part of it!
I know he’s better than this, so what was he thinking when he was editing this? Whatever Ritchie is smoking, I seriously don’t want ANY of it.
I’d just like to extend my warmest wishes to all those who are about to finish their first day of fasting for the year 1426 AH (2006 AD). Small history lesson for those in the dark, AH stands for After Hijra and is how the Islamic calender is dated (only reason I know the exact year is because I was born in 1400 AH).
During the month of Ramadan, those able (ie not old, traveling or sick) fast (no consumption of food or water or anything else) from sunrise to sunset. Obviously you can eat as much as you want after hours, but gourging your face with food defies the point of this month.
This is effectively the 4th time I fast in London, and each year it becomes slightly harder for me. It’s not because the day is longer now than last year (Ramadan moves forward 2 weeks a year due to be set according to the Lunar calender) and fast breaks at 6:30 in the evening, that’s not what makes it difficult for me.
One of the things that I hate about being a bachelor, and it’s a very small point, I hate eating alone. It’s one of those rituals that really cuts me. I remember when I was in University and I’d see anyone about to start their meal and they were sitting on their own, that I’d go up (whether I knew them or not) and start chatting. It’s just one of my ticks. So obviously, breaking fast is something unfortunately I do on my own here. When I was still in school my brother and I would fast the day and at least we’d both understand where the other was coming from.
Breaking fast every evening as a family remains one of my fondest memories, and the closest I can approximate it is to Christmas day, every single day for an entire month. It’s a quiet moment. The table is set. Usually we’d eat in the kitchen, however as it’s a special month, the dining room was used throughout the month. Throughout the month we’d get various guests to join in breaking fast. Even though we were far away from others fasting, it still felt special.
Still though I love this month for how it makes me think about certain things. I hate the first couple of days as the body isn’t used to it and you get headaches, but once that hump is passed, it’s smooth sailing until the end of the month when the body is growing weary of the fast.
So to my family, Nadiya and everyone else breaking their fast around the world, I’d like to extend my warmest wishes for a Ramadan Kareem.
Clerks 2: The Passion of the Clerks Video Blog. Extremely funny stuff, especially the intro by Kevin Smith in the first installment.
I’d first like to thank the 9 people who bought a print off me. You guys rock, and I’m seriously humbled by the fact that my work is appreciated enough for you to buy something off me. You guys have made the Broken Kode priority list and once I’ve got things set up correctly you will be getting promo stuff when the time comes. All the prints have now finally sold out. It took around 6 months to go through them, and I think I made a total of something like £50, so I won’t be relocating to the Bahamas any time soon; then again I didn’t exactly do it for the money. Honestly I’m just glad that 9 gracious souls decided to indulge me, so I’d like to thank you guys greatly.
Those who actually visit the site rather than just rss-ing me will have missed the little additional graphic that’s sitting right there on the side bar for about a day now. That’s correct I’m teaming up with Streetshirts to provide original BK t-shirts. There’s a couple of reasons behind this, mainly due to the fact that I actually really want to wear nice t-shirts that don’t cost me the earth. Sylvane (one of my housemates) mentioned to me a couple of years ago that I really should start using my designs to create some t-shirts. 2 years later. The tees will hopefully be available later on this week, as I’ve still got to iron out some bits and pieces with Steven (from StreetShirts) who’s been exceptionally patient with me. This is a teaser of what to expect. There will be a total of 3 t-shirts available in the first collection. We’ll see how things pan out and go from there.
One of the reasons I’m actually announcing this now rather than when they officially go on sale is due to the fact that the excellent Treehouse, a PDF web development magazine, came out today, and it’s FREE, so all you boys and girls can go download now from the great folks over at Particletree. The guys were extremely gracious to run an ad for me, however in my classic fashion I’m not 100% ready. I’d like to blame it on the stars and the moon and public transport but truth is I just didn’t actually see October coming so fast.
So thanks guys for running the ad, you’re on my Christmas card list… even though you mispelled my name; it’s Abou Alfa guys, not Alpha :)
Finally saw Howl’s Moving Castle yesterday. Laurent and I have been talking about watching this on the big screen for nearly a year now, as we’re both MASSIVE Miyazaki fans. In fact coming to think about it, I don’t think you can possibly watch a Miyazaki movie and not become a fan of his. Every new Miyazaki movie should be savored because in my opinion they honestly don’t come out as often as they should, which if I had it my way would be every single week.
The thing I liked the most in the movie was the characters who were all extremely well defined. The thing that made me laugh was how all the male characters came off as incredibly CAMP (read: slightly fruity in case you’re not familiar with the term camp), and to a certain degree I couldn’t really take them seriously. My favourite character without a doubt was Turnip Head, who is a fantastic addition to the number of characters under the Studio Gibli umbrella. A really pleasant surprise as well was the voice of Billy Crystal for Calcifer, who did an excellent job.
The world that this movie was set in reminded me of Kiki’s Delivery service a great deal, however for some strange reason I didn’t think the animation was even as close as polished as it was in Spirited Away, which remains my favorite Miyazaki movie ever.
Having said all that coming out of the movie you’ll have a massive smile on your face, since it’s such a great piece of cinema. As Laurent put it:
I’m working on a new project in Wantage which is just south of Oxford. To get there we have to pass through Grove, the headquarters of Williams F1. It’s a lot less imposing than I imagined, but then again not everyone’s got a Foster’s designed HQ.
Alex Maleev teaches you to draw the Owl. Great stuff, from one of my favourite artists of the past 5 years.
I’ve been thinking about the whole situation and how some people might feel a bit left out of the whole design process with regards to Shuttle. So in order to get some more feedback, and hopefully get a few ideas that we might not have come up with ourselves, I’m going to start writing these WorkShops. Every Workshop we’ll be dealing with the specific aspect of the WordPress Admin section the Shuttle team is currently working on.
In this inaugural edition, as you might have guessed, our attentions is going to be centred on the Dashboard. Currently as it stands, we’re effectively showing exactly what is shown currently in the Dashboard, except we’ve gone and relocacted the various sections (to make them more user centric), given them some colour and generally spiced them up. The question open for discussion is whether or not we’re missing something fundamental that you’ve seen elsewhere or you think the WordPress Dashboard could use.
Just off the top of my head,
Concentrating on one specific aspect at a time will enable everyone to take an active role in the development of the WordPress Administration Panel.
Despicable Horses Nice modification of Rin. If he could just sort out the comments section out.
Not many people read The Guardian, compared to other fine publications like The Sun (which apparently has got the biggest circulation, something seriously wrong with this statistic in case you missed the sarcasm, but anyway).
I’ve never been a newspaper person myself. Just never seen the point. Which is kind of strange, considering that growing up, it was a weekly pilgrimage to get the Sunday papers. In Athens there wasn’t that many places that sold Arabic newspapers. Sundays was always a trip to the local newsagent, that was over an hour away :). My dad would sell this trip in a family outing type thing, we’d get some lunch in a restaurant (my mum cooks Monday - Saturday, Sunday is my dad’s day to cook, which explains the restaurant option every Sunday). When I was at University, everyone used read the paper every Saturday and Sunday during breakfast and lunch.
I find it strange since I devour the written word in all it’s forms, except this clearly disposable version, the newspaper. On Wednesday, coming out of the tube, I was greeted with a free sample copy of the new redesigned Guardian. So I had a look at it, and I was engrossed in the little snippets. I read a couple of the opinion columns, and while a lot of it didn’t really inspire me much, but even then I’m considering buying this or the Independent on a quasi-regular basis.
Fellow 9ruler Greg over at Airbag Industries has posted about the lack of design in the WordPress Administration User Interface. I thought it prudent to address his concerns while at the same time try get everyone up to speed on the Shuttle project.
Personally I think it’s just wrong to criticize a completely open source project like WordPress as though it owes you something, unless of course you’re prepared to do something about it. WordPress is not the vision of one person, but the collaborative efforts of thousands. The fact of the matter is that when someone doesn’t like how WordPress does something, or know that they can do a better job, it’s well within their right to do just that. It’s not frowned upon, but actually encouraged and aided whenever possible. Greg isn’t saying any new here, countless others have voiced this opinion, except some have chosen to do something about it and help the community by contributing.
It’s very funny that he should mention the fight between the developer and the designer. I experience this every day, only it’s between the engineer and the architect. I will say that most fights/arguements come between the designers on the team rather than from the developers side. Joen, Michael and I are constantly bickering over 2 pixels!!! That’s when the rest of the team keeps quiet as the three geeks go at it, explaining the virtues of keeping things compact or not.
The shuttle project is ALIVE and kicking. In fact it’s hasn’t been this busy since we announced the project back in December of last year. The esteemed Bryan Veloso has also been added to the development team. We’ve recently finished a great milestone in the project after MUCH coming and going between us. Many people ask about showing what the interface is going to look like, and while NOTHING would make me happier than to show EVERYONE what we’re up to, I’ve got to make sure I don’t because the mock ups change on a weekly basis, as we work through things between us. We’re currently on version 27 of the main write up area. Expect several mammoth posts crossing over several blogs when this is done, but until then, know that we’re on top of things. It’s not the fastest process by any stretch of the imagination but it’s getting there.
If you’ve downloaded the latest beta or played around with a blog on WordPress.com then you’ll see a few changes from the current 1.2 install. Subtle things like the blue colour now found in the admin panel, the moveable sections in the sidebar, or the increase/decrease textarea. While these are still not styled properly the fact that they are part of the design is not a mistake, it’s due to the give and take over several months.
As some might have been aware, Broken Kode was down for a few hours on Sunday, along with most of the Internet (seems everyone cool hosts their sites either with Dreamhost or Mediatemple, noooch). I don’t mind that since I’ve had it happen to me before, countless times with my previous host. Dreamhost have been blogging about it. The also eventually sent an email to everyone trying to explain everything.
The real reason I’m writing this is to call out their bullshit excuse their building services maintenance people have given. See part of my job is to actually design the electrical backup systems to buildings. Some buildings are considered ‘mission critical’ type buildings. That’s usually financial institutions, hospitals etc. One of the areas I claim a certain amount of knowledge about are UPS systems (as I’ve helped design and maintain several systems all over London).
A UPS is an Uninterrupted Power Supply. When power goes down in a building, it take a while for the generators to kick in, so there’s an interim period where the UPS acts as the electrical supply. Usually it’s some electrical panels and some batteries (the preferred system in America as far as I’m aware, although in the UK other systems are used extensively). Everyone with me, good let’s see what they said shall we:
For those of you glossing over this little part of the email, generators will fail, that’s a given. They might not have checked them properly, they could choke up, this is a very common thing, which is why you always have several, to provide resilience to the system. One fails you’ve got another one to handle the load or whatever. There are different degrees of resilience, and that’s where the term n+1 (which they also talk about later comes into play). N being the nominal number of generators they need to supply the building completely, and plus 1 for the additional generator, in case one fails.
As they’ve said the 3 generators couldn’t handle the load, which is fine. Load shedding is when the actually building is smart enough to make sure it provides power to the most important equipment in a building before it completely STOPS. So it seems there’s something more important in the building than the servers. Unless they’re sharing their space with other people, I don’t see what’s more important, and surely not all the servers would be down, since 3 of the 5 were still operating, apparently.
The thing that made me laugh is their UPS statement. The UPS will only work for a total of 5-10 minutes depending on the actual generators, so I have NO idea what the hell they’re talking about when they said permanent UPS. Depending on how long you guys used them the batteries would have been DRAINED.
I asked on the blog if they have diesel rotary UPS systems which work slightly differently but I got no response. It’s nice that they’re very open about it, and I do appreciate the efforts they put into it, and so far I actually really like DH, but their building services people, and their consultants need a good beating. The one time the building needed to be able to utilise the thousands of dollars worth of electrical kit they’ve got in the place (and probably the reason they’re in that building in the first place) and it all fails on them when it actually mattered.
Knowing full well how the Apple fans out there are going to latch onto this, let me just say that I am not an Apple basher, nor am I a Microsoft fan. I don’t like corporations, but that’s another story for another time. Right now I’m going to talk about hand held gadgets. I seriously doubt it can be disputed that the single most successful single kind of gadget of the last few years has been the iPod. It’s come in so many flavours I can’t even be bothered to try and hunt them down. Apple seems intent on releasing a new version every 6 months or something, which is nice for them, and sometimes for the consumer, as it’s generally a good product. It’s got it’s flaws but I’m not going to get into that here.
What I’m going to talk about is the DEATH of the iPod. See the thing is Apple has foreseen this little fact. The first hint was in the advent of the iTunes phone monstrosity with Motorola. You see Apple can see what Sony Ericsson are up to. They’re trying to make the ultimate gadget. When I was growing up, everyone had to have a Swiss army knife. I still have mine, and it’s one of the best constructed things in the world. When growing up, I couldn’t think of a single day without using it in some capacity or other.
I say will become, because I don’t feel they’re quite there yet, although they are trying their hardest. For some strange reason the mobile phone hasn’t really taken off in the States, even though their Canadian neighbours and the pioneers in the communications department. The mobile phone has evolved into a great deal more than just a phone. I only appreciated this little fact with my latest purchase, not because I hadn’t really thought about it, but rather because I hadn’t experienced it first hand.
Within this little bundle, I’ve got myself an email server (an gmails coming my way I can check upon them), phone (d’uh), 2 megapixel camera (with all sorts of bells and whistles, b&w, colour filters etc), mp3 player, radio, flashlight (complete with SOS sequence in case I need that), organiser, address book, and the list goes on. Every year that passes by the phones get more capabilities in them, and more features added to them. Flash memory card are always increasing while staying the same size (thus keeping the camera size down). All this in 1 SINGLE GADGET.
There are a few short comings however with the K750i, and Digital Swiss Army Knives right now. They’re trying hard to be the ultimate gadget, but I think they’re a few years from achieving that status. For example I’d like the ability to jack any headphones directly into the phone (I think the W800 has that capability), but that’s a minor quibble.
The beauty of all of this is Apple know the end is nigh (sue me I’m trying to be poetic), which is why they’re starting to creep into the market. They’ve actually taken a page from Sony however and decided not to jump into things on their own (like Sony originally did before they did the smart thing and joined forces with an established player). They’re partnering up with someone that’s got a bit of experience in the market, shame they went with the worst of the available phones manufacturers on the market. Motorola are known for providing shit phones. Lovely designs (usually), however crap capabilities and useless reliability. I’ve got to say that it seems someone was asleep at the wheel doing the design of the ROKR (can that phone be any uglier?). Maybe Apple should have joined forces with Nokia, who are known as the rock solid ones. Stability and simplicity is what Nokia pride themselves on.
So will the iPod die any time soon? Doubt it, but think back to what mobile phones were two years ago, now think what they’ll be capable of in 2 years time from now. Will you really be content with carrying an mp3 player, a digital camera, a phone or would you rather just have everything in one complete package? I know what I’ll be up for.
I’ve been waiting for this for a pretty long while. Tristan has finally released his long awaited (at least for likes of Joen, Micheal, Mathias and me) Zenphoto. If you’re interested in a simple program that seems like it’s got a bright future amongst those people not really interested in hosting their photos on a server far far away, then Zenphoto deserves your attention. I’ve only been playing with it for a day now and already I know what I’m going to love using this application.
Setting Up Zenphoto on Dreamhost Before I talk about the program, I’m going to talk a bit about the setting it up since I did have a bit of trouble with that. Not the program’s fault by ANY stretch of the imagination, just me being dim, and Dreamhost being a bit awkward. So this is a public service announcement for anyone on Dreamhost that wants to play around with this program but having a bit of trouble getting over the first hurdle.
To get the Zenphoto set up you only need to edit two files.
Change it to whatever you want, in my case it was pictures so my file looks like this:
<li><strong>config.php</strong>
The config file is found in the zen folder. Everything is pretty bog standard, follow the instructions in here to a T and you shouldn’t have a problem. If your database isn’t working, make sure you’ve named it properly, that could be because you’ve named the database incorrectly.
Make sure that you actually put the database host name in front of your website url, as shown below.
$conf[‘mysql_host’] = “zenh.brokenkode.com”; // Probably won’t need to change this.
However if you find that your database is working, (by having a look in phpmyadmin, or the fact that ZP actually tells you it’s all ok), but are having trouble actually logging in, that can be attributed to the server paths and how Dreamhost likes you to call up these bits and pieces. Crucially.
// The path to zenphoto on the server - e.g. /home/user/public_html/zenphoto. No trailing slash/ $conf[‘serverpath’] = “/home/username/brokenkode.com/pictures”;
Make sure that you actually exchange your REAL username for username, and the full path to where you’ve put ZP on the server.
// The URL of zenphoto from the domain root. - e.g. ‘http://www.yoursite.com/zenphoto' // (or ‘/zenphoto’ in that case). No trailing slash/ $conf[‘webpath’] = ‘/pictures’;
This one actually gave me the grief. Make sure you just put path, not the entire url.
I’ve not even been using it for 24 hours and yet I’m pretty impressed with the simplicity of everything. When you do something that’s not really prim and proper, like trying to create a folder without even a single image to upload you get these helpfully coloured system messages (we’re using these in Shuttle btw, Matt and co have been giving them some Ajax love as well).
Uploading images is a very simple process with several options available (JPEG, PNG, GIF and ZIP files, seriously what more do you need?). I like the fact that when you’re in the upload section you have 5 image slots where you can actually use, with the option to increase the number to as many as you want with the click of one button.
The colour scheme of the administration panel by Joen is very soft on the eyes and I’m really loving the thoughts behind the actual program coming through. Simple, yet functional.
Zenphoto ~ Improvements & Future Dev Tristan has got a battle plan. The roadmap can be found here. Things that I’d like to be able to do from the program itself (not sure if it’s possible really).
Delete files - Currently there is no really way to delete images from the admin panel. You need to go via ftp or something. Also I’ve noticed that the number tally of the pictures the admin panel indicates are still in the folder does not update if a file is deleted. We’re still in Beta, so I’m sure little quirks like this will be ironed out for future releases.
Sizing images - It seems that whatever size the file is ZP will stretch it out to fit in the maximum specified width. While that’s pretty ok for anything larger than the desired width (so nothing looks out of whack) the problem then comes into play when you’ve got images lightly smaller than the default, so it would be nice to keep the smaller files at their size in the images section. It could come as a little check box next to when uploading the image?
Support and Documentation - Tristan and co were great trying to solve my problem, however I think (from personal experience) you can do the support thing for a while, because it’s fresh and you want to help people understand what you’re doing, however your enthusiasm will wane. The creator ideally should concentrate on making the program better etc. There are other who can contribute to an open source project in different ways, that are just as crucial and important as coding and bug squashing and theme creating, and that’s offering users support. Tristan’s got a couple of things in the pipeline to help the user out, which in my mind is as essential as files to the program itself.
Final Thought Zenphoto is a joy to use, I know I’ll be using it for a good while to come. If you’re looking for something simple, functional and beautiful, go download it now.
I’ve been having a weird phone day today. As mentioned before, I’m really not a mobile phone user per say. However due to circumstances I’ve decided to yield and as such I bit the bullet and ordered something. That’s when the drama started.
So I’m supposed to get the phone the next day. I had to go through a few hoops to get the damn thing sent to my work address, but I thought it was worth it, having it delivered to a place I might actually be there to receive it rather than 11 o’clock on a god damn weekday.
I waited, and waited and nothing. So I gave the good people a ring to see what the delay was all about. This is when I was informed that my phone was out of stock and had been this way for a good long while, something like 2 months!!! So I said listen I’ll wait a week or even 2 but 2 months and still no word is a bit on the stupid side. So I canceled the order. I knew I wanted a new phone, and needed one in many respects, however I had my heart set on the Sony k750i and I wanted a specific tariff with that.
So I just let it lull for a while. I didn’t receive any confirmation of my cancellation, so I sent them an email asking to confirm the cancellation. I got that yesterday.
Walked into work today and the nice receptionist provided me with a package, with my new mobile phone. I mean seriously WTF? Go to lunch, and I decide to forget my old phone in the restaurant, luckily my buddy picked up, shame I won’t see him till to tomorrow, so none of my contacts will be transferred till tomorrow. Still though could be worse.
Still learning the ropes, trying to get to grips with the thing. I’ll be sure to give an in-depth review of the thing after I’ve played around with it a bit more.
GAME BOY MICRO site. That this is TINY. The question now is whether I go for the GBM or the PSP.
Apart from the completely unfortunate name, the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a great little application. It’s generally accepted that it’s got the power of Photoshop, with the exception of a few features (probably more, but I’m not going to get into that right now). The obvious advantage of this all being the fact that it’s under a GPL licesense and completely free to do with as you wish; which many people have and created GIMPShop, which basically does a pretty good job of emulating Photoshop in many respects.
So why is it that I can’t bring myself to use the damn program?
I think it’s a mixture of things; maybe it’s the clunky pointer, maybe it’s the overall feel of the program that doesn’t have that polished Photoshop look. Maybe it’s the huge icons that distract you. Honestly it’s a combination of all of these things, plus it doesn’t feel like my black pencil. I’ll explain.
When I started drawing properly (as opposed to for fun and without purpose since I was like 5 years old) I bought a range of equipment. A ruler, some erasers, paper, ink, and a mechanical pencil. The last item is very important as I’ve kept that pencil since I was 13 years old. It used to have writing on the side of it, now it’s just a cheap and old black plastic mechanical pencil with a 0.5 nib. Honestly nothing to write home about, and yet without it I couldn’t draw anything. For me it’s got the perfect shape and weight that I can’t be creative without it anymore. A while back I went out and bought an exceptionally expensive Rotring alternative, only to use it once, realise that it just wasn’t even close and went back to my old and tested pencil.
I guess the point is that Photoshop to me is like my pencil, it’s got the right shape and weight and I understand it, I enjoy using it. The GIMP still needs some serious work to get to that level of usability for me, which is unfortunate as I’d like to use and support good Open Source projects, it’s the future.
World of Inspiration Quotations. New site from fellow 9ruler, Garret. If you like quotations, this is where to go.
It’s been a while since I read a proper Authority story. Last time it was the one issue found in the Coup D’etat mini-series which effectively sets the scene up for this story. Just finished reading Volume 1 of The Authority: Revolution (the mini-site also provides a little video interview with Dustin the artist of the book, more on him later) The Authority now control America and are making a better world, or so they would like to believe.
The book is written by the supremely talented Ed Brubaker. Part of me is very disappointed that Wildstorm lost this guy to Marvel, as he’s proven that he’s a person who truly understands and appreciates the history of the Wildstorm Universe, with his brilliant Point Blank and Sleeper series
Unlike many people out there reading comics, I’m much more an Image boy, rather than a Marvel or DC boy. That’s not to say I will buy everything by Image, but explains my reading habits. I hunt down stuff by creators, and not a company, with the sole exception of the Wildstorm Universe. It’s the one set of books that has always been one step ahead of the rest. I doubt I’ll ever do work for hire (although never say never) but if I did it would have to be in the Wildstorm Universe and with a writer that actually was a fan of the Universe, as Ed Brubaker so clearly is.
In the latest trade paperback in the Authority series (Volume 7 apparently, I’m thinking 2 for the Warren Ellis run, 2 for the Mark Millar run, and 2 for the Robbie Morrison run), is easily back to the exceptional form established by the first 2 creative teams. This is some of the best Authority fare, where each issue has got memorable moments, dialogue and artwork. The structure is very different to previous incarnations. Previously Ellis and Millar structured their stories into groups of 4 issue arcs. Brubaker is doing a 12 issue mini series.
What I love about this story is that it allows the characters to grow. The status quo is not stagnant; the structure and details are constantly being questioned. For anyone thinking that everything remains the same throughout the life of the story to preserve the status quo is dead wrong. It’s playing out in a very unorthodox fashion, one I’m very keen on following through to with the next book.
One thing I’ve noticed however is that the first half of this story is a Midnighter story, while the second half will be a Jenny Quantum story. You can tell this is who Ed’s favourite is, and to be honest he is the coolest member of the team. In previous incarnations of the book it was more of team book, and all the characters got equal airtime, however Ed doesn’t seem to balance that. This isn’t so much a criticism as I like the fact that he’s concentrating on a few characters and giving them time to grow and develop. He does provide key moments for the other characters, however he is playing to his strengths as a writer.
The Wildstorm Universe has always had a single writer who defines the direction for many of the books for a given period of time. We’ve had the Brandon Choi era, followed by the Alan Moore era, Warren Ellis took over not long after that and set the tone for things to come for a while, then Joe Casey tried his hand, but he didn’t really get the Universe in my humble opinion, and now we’re slowly drawing the curtain on the Ed Brubaker era. I’ve enjoyed the Ed era the most (after the Alan Moore era). Ed has a complete understanding of the history of the WS universe and gives all faithful readers lots of gratification as he links in characters and situations perfectly. He provides continuity, while masterfully making it completely accessible for people that haven’t read the stories before. He has a respect for what’s come before which is very rare in the current comic book market. The twist he’s provided in the 5th issue however will have to be properly explained, but it’s an explanation I’m really looking forward to.
Like I said it’s a shame that it will also mark the last work that Ed will have done for Wildstorm (as he’s completed Sleeper which is the other must read book of the Wildstorm Universe).
The art is provided by the dynamic team of Dustin Nguyen and Richard Friend. I remember when Dustin first broke onto the scene. He got lambasted on the WS message boards, which I thought was supremely unfair and defended him, we had a few email conversations after that, and to say I’m not slightly biased towards the guy would be a lie. The fact that he’s got talent however is no lie. Since his early days he’s handled Batman, Wildcats and The Authority several times. The design of the book and the covers has dropped in quality significantly since the Wildcats 3.0 series. The difference with that series was the fact that we had the amazing Rian Hughes on the book design. Each cover was a lesson in how to be innovative in design and art. This series lacks that design edge. Dustin however makes his mark by giving Jenny Quantum her own special look.
Side note, I love Jenny Quantum. She’s easily turning into my favourite character right now, and I can see her becoming more and more prominent in future Authority stories.
His carrier interiors are very consistent and his designs for the Sons of Liberty were exceptionally well done.
So to recap if you stopped reading The Authority after the Millar run, do yourself a favour and pick up Revolution, you’ll remember why you liked these characters in the first place.
They say weirdness comes in threes, and I think I experienced that completely yesterday. Very long day started off getting a text message from Shadi whom I’ve not talked to in nearly 2 years. It’s weird because basically she’s the only person I know from Oxford, and I’ve never been to Oxford. Yesterday was the first time I actually ventured to that part of the country, on a site visit to the school I’m helping design. Once they’ve officially announced it I’ll probably talk about it because it’s a pretty cool project. Crazy coincidence, and that’s just getting out of bed, I should have known what the rest of the day would be like.
We’re on the train, and the more observant people around me, i.e Mike in this case points out that he thought he saw Patrick Head (who is the other half that make up the ownership of the Williams F1 team. As it happens to love the Williams F1 team) coming off the train with us. It wouldn’t be unheard of since the Grove factory is all of 5 minutes away. We get into a cab, and as we’re moving away and the guy is on a BMW scooter, with BMW Williams F1 written on it, chasing us down. Too fucking cool. I wish I could have asked grabbed him and said DO NOT LET NICK HEIDFELD GO!!!!! The man is golden.
Anyway the weirdness continued as we decided to meet up with Christos after work for a few drinks, only to bump into Nina, whom I’ve not seen since I was 14 or 15 years old. I of course did not remember her, and to be fair neither did she, but it was just like old school friends meeting up, and those cheesy Beer ads that come up. Dammit I’m living in a commercial.
Then it was time to unleash the grenade. Basically lots of people have got a talent in something. They do something very well, and have a talent at it. I really do honestly believe that. No one’s perfect, but everyone has something special about them that they do better than other people, the real thing is understanding and appreciating what the special thing is. Sometimes it’s apparent, oftentimes it’s hidden. The Grenade has the natural talent that he can pretty much start a conversation with just about ANY woman, or group of women. It’s amazing to watch, and you’d think I was blowing this out of proportion, but it’s unbelivable. Whereas most times you and I would have gotten to hello and then either had a cold shoulder and potentially a slap, he’s got them eating out the palm of his hand, he’s got their names, numbers, post codes and shoe size just in case.
After several random conversations we end up in Soho and go to several places around there, only to eventually bump into Daphne
Horhaus exceptional comic book work. I’ll definitely be picking up Warlands when it comes out. Where the hell did this guy come from?
The Official Adam Hughes Website is live. Not sure ow long that’s been up. Just to clarify, everytime I see a new Adam Hughes piece, I weep at how completely talentless I am compared to this guy, who should be an international rock star.
I hate ‘getting’ back into drawing. The reason is very simple as it takes me a good couple of tries before I remember how to hold the fucking pencil up straight. Yesterday was a very important day as it marked the FIRST day that I started drawing Sublime. I have eluded to this book for a good long while now. A version of the script has been lying on my floor for a good 4 months and to be honest I’ve been pretty chicken to pick it up and run with it.
I kept saying that I’d get around to it at one point or another once I’d finished the script completely. Needless to say that wasn’t the case. No I need to make a start now. If, or rather when I come back to modify pages, at least I’ll have made a step forward in the book itself. Sure it’s not going to be a masterpiece, then again, my first website wasn’t a masterpiece and neither has any other one after that been what I’d call perfect. Not even close. What I can say however and what makes it easier for me is the fact that there is an improvement every single time I get into the creator’s seat, and I suppose that’s what I’m hoping for with my comic book work.
A gradual progression of skill that will evolve hopefully from page to page. It’ll help me cut my teeth before I jump into the story that I’ve been putting off for the past 3 years.
The problem is that I’m the photoshop generation. Traditionally comic books are great in the following way:
When I start drawing a page I start imagining various things, I can see the page clearly in my head while the page is blank. Usually speaking the final page is reasonably close to my intended vision. When it’s not I blame it on my lack of skill. It does happen that your imagination is a few steps in front of your skill. The thing I’ve been noticing more and more is that now I won’t draw absolutely everything because I know it would take me very long to do manually, and wouldn’t be as perfect of clever as if I did it in photoshop.
Got a few problems I’m trying to sort out, seems my .htaccess file screwed around with my install, then I deleted that and the admin is working but all the posts are getting 404 errors, anyone with any idea what’s going on I’d really appreciate it.
Right the problem is with my htaccess file and Permalinks. Basically the second I put anything in my htaccess file (by defining a specific permalink structure) everything breaks. Can’t seem to handle a htaccess file. I’ve posted on the forums for some help, so if you’re looking for anything in particular, just give me a couple of hours (hopefully less) while I sort this rubbish out.
Worst of it all, it was working in the morning just fine, haven’t done ANYTHING since last night, so I have no idea what the deal is.
Starfish Diaries I’ve setup a blog for Stathi. Remember when you first started blogging and you had that itch to keep posting, Stathi’s got that itch.
Easily the single biggest draw to using WordPress (apart from the price of course, which is priceless didn’t you know), is without a shadow of a doubt the actual community that has gathered around these handful of PHP files. I know I couldn’t do a slew of things as easily as I’m doing them now without the community. Whenever I want to do something, someone’s already taken the time and done it for me.
So you can imagine my shock when I’ve actually come up with a couple of things that I’d like to do that unfortunately haven’t been touched upon, or at least I’m completely ignorant about. If they do exist and you know about them, please tell me, you’d make my day for sure, maybe even my week :)
WordPress provides you with the native ability to provide an rss feed for any category you choose, by adding a /feed at the end of the link (you can read a much more indepth explaination on Phu’s site). Very nice, very simple. Unfortunately this gives the user absolutely no indication of what feed they’re actually subscribing to, unless of course they decides to have a wad through the damn url, and then they’ve got to change the name manually in the aggregator to distinguish between the several feeds from the same site. Ideally what I’d like is a plugin (don’t like hacks very much as they’re usually broken when you upgrade and that’s a complete shag) that helps me control the feeds themselves. Lets me give different category feeds a different name.
Now I know Chris is working on this, but he seems to be having a wee bit of trouble implementing the thing. So I’m going to put it out there, maybe someone’s got the answer because they’ve done it already etc. What I’m looking for here is a simple plugin that will download my posts and all associated information (not so bothered about comments although that would be an excellent feature), in a specific order, for a specific period of time. The alternative is to make a theme and download that, which I did, but it doesn’t have the level of control a plugin has, and also it would have to be used with a plugin such as the Custom Query String plugin (which isn’t working 100% for me for some reason) to control how the order the posts are shown.
About 3 months ago I was on the phone to Housy, and he asked me if I wanted to go on a mountain bike trip he always organises in September. At the time it seemed like a really good idea, bearing in mind I’d not been on a bike since I was 20 years old. However I’ve got a serious history with mountain bikes. Prior to going to University I was a mountain bike NUT. If there were two things that I could consider myself completely obsessed with, it was comic books and mountain biking; movies and video games were in there somewhere but no where near my obsession with the other two.
So I said yeah, sounds like a plan, and then forgot about it. Last week Housy rings me again to remind me of it all, needless to say it’s completely slipped my mind. I’m soo glad I didn’t try and find some bullshit excuse to get out of it all. I’ve been going through a bit of a rough time, just having London and work shoved down my throat. It’s amazing how little you need to travel to be out in the country, with completely untouched areas of green and trees and yellow fields. My favorite part was the fact that I had nothing on me, save the bottle of water. The mobile phone, the keys the wallet, everything was left behind. It was just me, the bike and the mountains.
I’ve never used a bike with disc brakes. My mountain bike was one of the first to actually have front suspension, so it’s pretty crazy for me looking at these things, and the guys talking about their top changing gear-changers as ‘retro’. Which is probably why I locked my brakes, making it look like I was in for a pretty hairy moment. We’re going down this side road, but we’re traveling at at least 30 miles an hour, and it’s a turn at the bottom of the hill, and a jeep decides it wants to use the other side of the road for traveling while I’m going down it (how inconsiderate I say). So a bit of flat tiring and some burnt rubber smell and the ride continued. The thing is though that I’ve been in a lot worse situations in the past, which is why I was pretty calm through out this whole incident. When you’re younger you really don’t give a shit. You don’t know fear.
We covered a total of 48km (30 miles), in the sunny hills of Wendover. We didn’t do it in the best of times, but 48km off road is pretty hardcore seeing as I’ve not done it in 6 years. My a$$ is feeling it, as are the palms of my hands from the battering the handle bars gave my hands, but I feel completely invigorated having done this, gave me an incredible adrenaline rush, and got me out the city, which is a major plus. It’s not something I would have done on my own as I’m a complete City Slicker. It’s not a question of not being interested, but it’s more of a question of not having the drive to go and do the country thing.
Easily the most amazing thing I saw was a little old lady that was working in the restaurant area of the pub/hotel we were staying at. We later found out that Dolly was 91 years old, and still coming into work like clockwork, waiting on tables. I find that completely amazing, as I’ll probably be dead and buried around that time, but here is this old lady who’s active in ways many people in their 20s aren’t. Waiting on tables is hard work, especially with a bunch of quasi to completely drunk mountain-bikers.
Originally I was scared that I had forgotten how to ride, but that’s not the case, it truly is like riding a bike :).
I’ve had a technical problem plaguing me at work for the past 3 weeks. While I’ve tried very hard to let it not affect me, it’s been hard running away from it. See the thing about me (and this is something I really should work on) is that when I have a problem that I don’t actually have the answer to, but am pretty confident that I can eventually find the solution to, I’ll keep quiet and wait it out. In most cases through life I’ve found that to be an adequate solution, unless I’m looking for confrontation. In a professional setting however that’s a bit of a no-no.
It’s one of those behavioural things I’ve noticed in the past couple of years about the way I do things. There’ll be a burst of energy at one point and things become clear and I’ll be able to tackle things head on, but until that time comes and the solution appears before my eyes, I decide to stay low, keep my head down and concentrate on other things.
So yesterday I sat down and tried to actually document what I had to accomplish. I used Outlook to write a list of tasks and then prioritised them (I’ve got a massive post about PIMs and To-do lists but I digress). The problem was put as a high priority and yet I still left it to be tackled as the last item of the high priority items.
Talking it over with a couple of people, I finally found a solution to my dilemma, that for some reason I just didn’t see for 3 weeks. Which leads to thinking, was it really 3 weeks worth of thinking, or was it that I wasn’t actually thinking about it, or was it divine inspiration? It definitely was a question of not seeing the trees from the forest and this has given me a massive sigh of relief and calmed me completely in other aspects of my life.
So this particular problem, which honestly has made me in many ways hate going into work, has been eating at me for 3 weeks. Although you’re not meant to bring work home with you, I unfortunately can’t do that completely. That’s part of the reason that I didn’t become a doctor, to my father’s dismay. I take my work very personally, very seriously. It’s a reflection on me. If you’re not going to do something correctly, don’t bother.
I don’t mean correctly in the eyes of everyone else, but at the very least in your eyes. I’m my own worst critic, and when I know something is wrong I can’t help but think about it. Being an anal perfectionist makes life hard sometimes.
Just to be perfectly clear, this post probably has spoilers, or links to spoiler materials, so if you’ve not watched the first season, take it from me and go buy it then come back a week later and read the post.
Seeing as we don’t seem to agree on comic book movies (you are soo wrong), I thought it was weird that I effectively bought into the new Battlestar Galactica series based on his ‘recommendation’. I mean Mike’s a space geek (and proud of it), so he was bound to like it. When I saw the ads for it a while back on Sky I was intrigued, but unfortunately I don’t do TV, with the odd exception (Smallville, F1 and Lost). It’s not so much that I didn’t want to watch it on TV, it’s just that because I’m actually not programmed to wait for a program it slipped off my radar, and by the time I remembered it, it was like 3 episodes into the series, and I hate playing catchup.
So Michael’s recommendation and a small throwaway blurb in Wired and I was well up for this series. I started watching it something like 2 week ago, half way through the mini-series, Sylvane comes in and see the pyrotechnics and decides to stick around and see what’s going on.
For the next week we’d watch a couple of episodes a day, that’s how addicted we got to the program.
The storyline is a very simple one. However all story are enhanced by the way they’re told. It’s a fact. Some of the most fascinating ideas for a story fall flat on their face due to poor execution. In the case of BG, it’s succeeds.
If you’re reading this because you’re still on the fence here’s a quick synopses of the first 10 minutes of the mini-series. There’s a lot more to it but this sets the scene for you, then go out and rent/buy whatever and watch the series:
The story centres around the 12 colonies. They exist somewhere in space, and they are very advanced humans. 40 years ago the man-made Cylons (read: robots) revolted against the humans, their masters. The war waged for a while (can’t remember how long) but a stalemate was reached, and the Cylons gathered themselves and left. A space station was made to act as a port where Humans and Cylons can talk things over. Every year the Humans send a representatives, every year the Cylons send no one…until now.
What follows is an intricate plot through the complete extermination of the human race. I’ll leave it at that because I’ve said too much already.
Apparently the original Starbuck was a man, oh the controversy. So in re-imagining this series some of the pilots and the president are women. I love Starbuck. She’s insane, she’s tough and she’s got some classic lines in the series.
Now I’m probably in the minority here, but I really love Gaius and his relationship in his head with Number 6 is great fun. Sylvane and Archie got really bored by these scenes and annoyed at the music in the background that would always play whenever these two decided to talk to each other. Can’t really say that it bothered me, since I was enjoying the dialogue that was being exchanged. The good Doctor also had the most memorable lines and scenes in the series… and not all of them were with Number 6 directly.
Obviously I love Commander Adama, lots' of presence on the screen and his face is just fucked up enough and wrinkly for you to believe that he’s been through war. His voice is just like the guys in the cinema trailers, you know the ones that have been smoking since they were 5 years old, so it’s this harsh voice. He shows a lot of inner anger and the role of a man with the world literally on his shoulder. The nice thing about this guy in direct comparison to say Sheridan in Babylon 5 is that he’s not the hero Commander, in that he gets into the fighter and tries to act like he’s 20 years old. He knows his place, and knows where he has to be and that he makes the decisions, while others execute; if they’re good soldiers they do as they’re told. Definitely adds a bit of realism to the whole situation.
Just a little history, I’m not a Star Trek fan, I’ve seen my share of Generations, but just bored me to tears, and well the storyline was a bit too generic for my liking. I’m a Babylon 5 nut. I love the series to bits. Admittedly it does look a bit dated now that I’ve gotten into Battlestar Galactica, but B5 set the pace for all other television space operas; what being the first to use CGI properly, compared to the models that were used for all previous space operas.
So how are the fx in BG? Astounding is the word that comes to mind. It reminds me greatly of Robotech, in what they’ve done with the sheer amount of Cylon ships that are sent one after another. The missiles also have that trailing gas effect best seen in the Macross Plus series.
One thing that I wasn’t really impressed with, which makes Firefly that more special, is the fact that there is sounds in space. We all know in space no one can hear you laugh. Sound doesn’t travel, so that was a bit disappointing, at least because I got pretty excited about that. Also let’s not forget that while Babylon 5 actually explained how artificial gravity was created in space, these finer points in the BG universe are just glossed over as with most space operas.
I love the ending, great little cliffhanger that makes me anxious as all hell for October to get here right now so that I can get into this series again. It’s only been a couple of weeks since I saw it, but damn it I miss it already.
Free Opera. As part of Opera’s 10 year Anniversary celebration it’s giving away it’s browser for free. That’s today only people. Read the footnotes. (via designateonline)
The hardest thing for me in the nearly 2 years of blogging has been to establish a logo for Broken Kode. It’s been such an elusive task, at times I’ve just given up. It’s not so much that I can’t be bothered creating one. Far from it, nothing brings the inner design geek in me as going from a rough sketch to applying colours and words to a logo. It’s a great process to go through that I love every time I jump into it. The problem however is that I’ve struggled greatly to find something that is adequate for the site.
The thing I’ve noticed is that inspiration just jumps out at you, and when you least expect it, the perfect solution is there in front of your eyes.
My kingdom for a decent PIM, or Personnal Information Manager. I’m going to do something that Joen did when he was describing what he’d like for a photo gallery application, Tristan heard him and decided to give him what he wanted, hell he even went to far and designed the damn thing for him. I’ve tried several PIMs in the past, and while some are very useful, and nippy in carrying out things, I’ve got to say that I don’t like having to different applications, one at work and the other in the office. So I want one that’s on my server. This kind of brings about my ideals for the whole perfect RSS feed aggregator. It’s going to have to be something special to make me stop using Sage.
I originally thought it might actually be Feedlounge. While that application is very slick, something about external applications that don’t reside on my server space actually makes me unconfortable. This explains why I don’t have a flickr account and why the BK boards are run of punbb, which is a very slick little application. I’m planning on making it look a bit different and integrating it with BK proper.
PIMs however are a completely different beast altogether. I want to have all my contacts in a nice way, I want to have all the todo lists with funky ajax coming out the wazoo, I’m not terribly fussed about a calander application, but those 2 things would be a very nice addition.
On my 26th birthday I was forced into seriously thinking about getting a proper mobile phone, with a proper contract. I’ve been pretty adverse to the idea, essentially because I feel it’s a bit of a rip off, which after a day of searching, it effectively is. The problem however still remains that it is essential in my life right now, if I’m going to keep in touch with people.
It comes in EXTRA handy when the bar you’ve chosen (and was a pretty popular place) decides to shut down a couple of months ago, and you’ve told everyone and their dog to meet you there at 7:30 only to get a ring at around 7 from Jackie saying
Jackie - “Khaled I think you’ve got a problem..” Me - “I’ve got many problems Jackie, George Dubayou, mobile phone tariff prices, which one are we talking about?” Jackie - " I’m standing in front of this place and it’s been shut down, says for the past 2 months…"
You know those scenes in the movies, where the camera is like really far away and it zooms in on the person when he’s finally realised something fundamental and you know that he’s got one word on his mind right now… Shit.
Damage Control was effectively put into action, except of course when it rains it pours doesn’t it. I’m out of friggin battery on my phone, and I’m out of credits, and I didn’t have the latest number to a lot people I invited. It’s like the universe was trying to tell me something, but instead of easing me into it, the universe turned around a decided to give me a good @$$ ramming and tell me to wake up and get with the fucking program.
GET A BLOODY TARIFF YOU IDIOT is all I could hear the Universe tell me. Part of me wanted to break out into a musical number around that particular moment,
Luckily I didn’t cry, I hate to see a full man cry and neither should anyone else. So I’ve made up with universe, and I went on the hunt to look for a mobile phone. The only tip I’ve got is to effectively not buy a package from the High Street as it’s a complete and utter rip off. I’ve taken my search online as a lot of my life, and I’m seeing some seriously great offers, I just need to fish around a bit more and confirm which handset/tariff suits me the most.
Currently the Sony Ericsson K750i is looking to be the contender for the title, but I’m still not sure yet.
What’ll probably happen is I’ll have to learn how to convert the BK into a mobile enabled website, which should be GREAT fun :).
There’s a first time for everything, cliché I know; I’ve been going non stop at work for a good couple of months now. It got to the stage that I hate going in there. It’s not the people, it’s not the job in particular, it more the fact that I’m completely saturated from the whole routine itself. I’ve worked a few weekends, and this has seriously hurt my general drive for life. I’m a lot more mellow and cranky at the same time.
It was really time for a break. So today I decided to do just that. I woke up at a normal time and wrote a list of things to do in my moleskin book. I honestly can’t live without that book. All my ideas, thoughts, sketches and notes are inbetween the covers of this excellent little black book.
Ipod in tow, I decided to discover another aspect of London, seen through those people that don’t seem to have work to be at :). It’s amazing what you can see and notice if you’re not in a rush to get to somewhere, or in fact when you’re taking the whole experience in.
Today effectively marks a very important day. I’m being crypic for a reason. I’ve got several announcements that I’ll be making in the following days.
Artistically David Mack is one of my biggest influences. In fact he’s such an influence that my first foray years ago into actually colouring my work using water colours can be landed squarely on his lap. The man escapes the boundaries of traditional art and elevates everything he does to a level few can ever see, and even fewer can ever reach. What I find amazing is the lack of recognition this man deserves in the real of both contemporary artwork and graphic design. Oh sure he’s got loads of fans from all regions of the world and all coming from different backgrounds, some design, some traditional art, some comic book art, but I still think he deserves much more.
And not to be completely cliched about the whole thing the guy is an exceptionally nice person as well. I’ve had several e-mail correspondences with the man and bought several books and what not off him in the past. I was even contemplating saving up to buy a piece of his artwork. It was going to cost me an arm and a leg, at $1500 but I was seriously thinking about it; luckily he didn’t actually have the particular piece I wanted as he’d already sold it. Luckily simply because I really couldn’t afford it even though I wanted it more than anything. Throughout our conversations he was such an approachable guy, which made me even more of a fan of the man as he earned my respect. It’s more than can be said of a lot of creators that let things go to their heads.
Every Thursday used to be a religious journey to get my weekly fix of my favorite books. I’ve since stopped doing that and rather like going into the store and waiting for things to jump at me. This week I was pleasantly surprised by the fifth installment of Mack’s fantastic Reflections series, which effectively is his collection of artwork that never saw print, sketches and other Mack related goodies. It’s not the most powerful one in the series, however Mack on a bad hair day is better than 90% of the ‘artists’ out there working in a professional environment.
I can acknowledge that his stuff might not appeal to everyone, but if it doesn’t then it’s that person’s loss. I’ll be writing about his epic series Kabuki in the coming months as it’s a series that deserves to be read by everyone who’s even mildly interested in a good story, in ANY medium.
Bryan Singer’s Superman Journal. Pretty great set of clips for you to download. Still think the costume is rubbish, but the casting of Clark is pretty spot on.
Version 4.0 has been a long time coming, as I’ve been sitting on the design for at least 3 month now. The idea popped into my head sometime in May, just something snapped and the idea began to grow. By the time I came back from holiday I knew exactly what I needed to do. Unfortunately due to work and life just getting in my way I was forced to put it on hold.
The one section of the site that is still in active development is the Gallery section. I’ve got an slight idea of what I want however I’m not 100% there yet. Hopefully that should get sorted out in the coming days.
This project also marks the first time I’ve used PHP Designer 2005 and HTMLGATE. Both fantastic applications that deserve your attention. Sure they’re not perfect as there are several bugs that need to be ironed out, but as website development tools go they’re both exceptional tools.
Ok to all you crazy lazy cats out there, thinking that it’ll be ok not to upgrade your wordpress install. You might be ok, but then again you might not be. A couple of hours ago something strange happened here at the Kode, and I effectively lost all my files that are loose in the root directory in the wordpress markup. Yup, EVERYTHING. Strangest damn thing in the world. I was chatting to my bro and he tells me I have no index. WTF? I go in there and sure enough I’ve lost everything.
Now that the security flaw has been exposed every cracker hacker shitfart has decided to give it a go and see what shit they can stir up. Fuck you cracker. So tip to the wise, UPGRADE NOW!!!
On to happier news, BKV4 should go live later on this evening, if not tomorrow morning. I might change my mind, although I’m determined to finish it off tonight.
My previous windowz fart obviously as it would, started making me thinking about operating systems, and the like. I’ve had a couple of days to mull it over and this is something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while now. Joen talked about why he wasn’t planning on switching in OSX anytime soon, and in fact was/is pretty happier with Microsoft. Whereas he approached things from a usability point of view, I’m going to talk about if from a completely different angle.
I was faced with this decision last year, when I was shopping around for my newest PC. Do I stay with Windows, do I jump ship and go for Macs, or do I go the hard-geek road and opt for Linux. After much thought and deliberation I decided to stay with Windows. I’m not going to state why I stayed, I’m instead going to talk about why I didn’t go for the other two, and hopefully from there lead to where I think operating systems will go, and in certain cases, should go.
Why not Mac? Do I like the design of the hardware? I absolutely love the metal box, very cool, very hardcore. What about the overall design aesthetics of the company? Damn straight. This is a company that has got the best product designers in the world. I can’t imagine how all these other companies just can’t even compare when it comes to the design aesthetics.
The operating system is said to be extremely stable as it’s been written on a Unix system, compared with the crap Windows is based on. So with all these good things going for it, what’s the problem?
It’s simple, I hate Apple’s marketing strategy. In my humble opinion the company has taken the fact that it has devout followers and decided to rape them for every single penny they’re worth. It’s this incredible cycle where the second they’ve got you in, that’s it you’re stuck. You might be happy there, but I certainly would not be. I’ll try and make some sense. OSX can only be run on an Apple box. That limits you to using only stuff by them. That keeps the price of the box and repairs and whatever under their control. That doesn’t have to be a problem, except I’m not truly keen on putting all my eggs in one basket.
My first and essentially only true Apple experience is my Ipodmini. I do like it but soo many things about it pisses me off like you wouldn’t believe. The main thing that really annoys me is how the accessories are milked to the brim. I also really hate the fact that you pay for the thing and they don’t even have the decency to supply a remote, or docking bay or whatever, and those things are then priced extortionately, or packages with something you really don’t need/want (earphones with the remote for example).
I know they’re a company and that’s what they’re meant to do, milk it for everything it’s worth, however I don’t need to play their game.
If I could buy OSX as a standalone program that operates on another manufacturer’s box, I would probably be one of the first in line to buy it. As it stands, I’m honestly not interested. This might change in the future, but not the immediate one.
Linux I love open source. I really do. I think in many respects it’s the future. However Linux comes across as a complete chore rather than an operating system. It’s only been pretty recently that the guys have copped onto the fact that interface and usability is as important as all the geeky optimization of the system, but it’s just not there for me.
Add to the fact that in order to run many programs I’d have to get a windows emulator, and well, it kind of defeats the object really doesn’t it. I do keep an eye out for new distro releases, and I’m hoping for the ultimate one to come along, but again I’ll have to wait for that one.
Ultimate OS Which kind of leads me to my final point, what is the ultimate OS in my opinion? One that combines the class of OSX with the freedom of Linux. One that provides me with the software options available to windows, without the loss of performance.
I get the sneaking suspicion that Google will eventually provide us all with the first online operating system. 10 years from now we’ll log in and know that everything has been backed up and double backed up. We’ll each have a terrabit of storage available to us, and we’ll never have the need to argue about this…except that honestly I don’t really trust google, but then again I didn’t trust the internet when it first appeared…
So I’m back in business. Hard drive has been completely wiped clean (although there seems to be 20gigs missing somewhere) and I’m on a clean install. The good news (at least for me) is that I was able to salvage this past week’s worth of work on BKV4. I’ve been asking Phu, Joen and Bryan different things through out the week, and they ALL came through for me in the most spectacular way. I honestly can’t thank them enough, but will do that more properly when I go live with version 4. I’m seriously hoping to get that done later on this evening.
It’s a bit early since it’s not completely there, but I think that if it’s live people will appreciate the tweaks that will go here and there as I build it up to full capacity.
Nope. I’ve already posted about my little problems with my computer last week. Unfortunately my salvation job of the hardrive hasn’t worked, and this morning, my computer wasn’t working.
This morning I go to boot it up check mails etc, and bam, nothing. It loads up the windows xp image goes to load windows, and then blue screen for a second and then restarts.
Recovery mode doesn’t want to play ball either.
Does this sound like a software or hardware problem? It does check the hardware apparently, and I do get to the actual xp screen, just doesn’t seem to want to load anything else. (I’ve got my stuff backed up, except for the project I was working on this week) which is why I’m not freaking out, but still, I’d rather not try and format the harddisc…or maybe I don’t have a choice.
See I REALLY don’t give a monkey’s what’s in my box. I could care less, really. All I care about is reliability, stability and performance. I never want to contact the manufacturer for support because it’s a bad scenario. You don’t want to be dealing with this, therefore you’re a bit tetchy. They don’t want to be dealing with irate customers on the other line, so they’re less than helpful most times.
What annoys me even more is the fact that I know getting through to Mesh Computers Technical support (computer is still under warranty) is going to be like getting an interview with god.
Luckily I’ve saved all my files, except for BKV4. Really annoying as I was completely in the zone there. I was around 70% there, and was planning on going live this weekend. The code was the cleanest I’ve ever done, I actually understood what I was doing with it all, and all for nothing. Fucks sake.
So I saw my uncle on sunday. Whenever I see the good doctor I always end up sitting there and taking in some serious pearls of wisdom. More often than not he’ll give me a small history lesson. Stuff I never learnt in school, stuff that captivates my imagination. Today he was telling me about this trip he made not too long ago in the mountains.
At one point he gave a throwaway comment about how this particular village was the first place in the Middle East to have an industrial printer, that actually printed arabic books. See it would seem that during the Ottaman occupation none of the Arab world was allowed to print in the arabic language. It was all done in Turkish. I’ve got to read up on this more I think since honestly the specifics of this section of history are not terribly clear to me; although I would love to learn more about it.
This comment just completely made me stop and appreciate our time right now. I’m a natural born optimist. I always see the brighter side of things. I wear my feelings on my sleeve. I don’t like something, chances are I don’t need to tell you about it because it’s written all over my face. I’m not a liar, nor a diplomat. Not being able to express myself in my given language would be tortorous. Even though I think the world leaves a lot to be desired from, I can still see how we’re currently better off than we were 500 years, 200 years, 50 years. Things that were acceptable back then, just don’t fly. We’re not as dumb as we were, and hopefully in 50 years time we won’t be as dumb as we are now.
Webloging basically takes that aspect of communication to the next level. I’d like to think that I’ll blog forever, but forever is a very long time, and I won’t live till forever. What’s good to know is that at least I’ll be able to try ^_^.
So I’m waiting for Stathis to get his lazy ass to the station, and seeing as I was a little bit early I went into the nearest store to check the latest magazines. While I’m in there I noticed the latest Wired issue. Now bear in mind I’ve never bought Wired in my life. It had a little title about blogging in the army which caught my eye, which was the reason I picked it up in the first place.
For some strange reason I didn’t actually notice the god damn cover itself. I wasn’t really interested in the rest of it. Except I really should have been. The cover story is about the Internet turning 10 years old. Yup Netscape IPO went live on the 9th of August 1995.
I didn’t realise this until I wrote this post that it seems you can read all the Wired articles online! So if you want to read what I’m talking about, the article is found here.
The article is written by Kevin Kelly, and in my mind is the article of the year; or at least the article I’ve enjoyed the most this year. It’s pretty lengthy, with the start telling you about the birth of the Internet and where everyone was predicting it would go. What makes the article shine is where Kevin starts to extrapolate as to where the Internet could potentially be in 10 years time from now.
Think about it, would you have been able to predict 10 years ago, Gmail, Google Maps, Ebay, Paypal, Amazon, Blogging, Open Source, Online Communities, P2P File sharing, Wikipedia? Kevin tries to do that, even though he claims he’s got absolutely no chance, I think he makes a gallant effort, and written a great article that made me smile for a long while after I read it.
Obviously it got me thinking when I actually started using the internet, and I’d probably say it was around September 1997. 2 years after the fact. Not sure when net access hit Greece, but I’m pretty certain it was during my ‘I’m not going to touch computers phase’. In 1997 my frequent areas were the Wildstorm forums, and yahoo. Times change.
When I first started Broken Kode it was originally meant to be the online account of my trials and tribulations to getting published. 1.8 years later I’m slightly closer to that goal, although I’ve not progressed the book in the same way I’ve progressed the graphic design and web site aspects of my life, I’m starting to get itchy fingers.
I printed out my draft script a little while ago. It currently clocks in at around 70 pages, but the book itself will probably clock in the region of 120 pages, or at least that’s what I’m aiming for.
My battle plan was to try and have a finished product when I’d start shopping it around to different publishers. Ideally it would be under a similar publishing model that Image Comics has. I control everything. That however does require you to have money up front to put up the publishing of the book.
Black and white publishing is 5 times cheaper than doing it all in colour. That’s a pretty harsh fact to get under grips with. If my submission wasn’t considered or whatever, my next plan of action was to self publish it.
A couple of months after I started blogging, CafePress decided to start it’s publish to demand option. I effectively was saved. Fair enough I’d have to sell everything via the net, and fair enough I’d have to do everything in black and white, at least I would have the book done and ready to go.
Nearly 2 years after I started this journey in earnest, Lulu decides to hit the scene. What is Lulu you ask? Well in simple terms it’s a new way to publishing. So what distinguishes Lulu from the CafePress model? As far as I can gather several very important aspects:
For me it’s that last one that really makes me stand up and take note. It gets provided for consumption by anyone, by everyone? You can effectively get it published and into book stores. You loose 20% of the commission but everything is set up for you. That’s elevates the game to a whole new level. It’s print on demand, but without limiting your audience to only those with access to a credit card and the net.
If I really wanted to publish my book in colour, that is also an option. An expensive option, but an option non the less.
So what’s the downside? Well effectively it’s all got to do with control. How much control am I willing to give away? Personally I’m curious about the actual quality of the final printed product. That’s what I care about ultimately. Which is why I’m planning on trying this out with something I actually have the time for doing right now.
I’m going to publish the first year of Broken Kode as a book to try and see what the quality and process of this actual system is. I’ll give an in depth report on my findings once I’ve got the finished product in my hand. Of course this isn’t going to be just the first year, this is going to be me going mental with the design, probably including doodles and commentary on posts I thought were of any significance or importance.
Update: The object of this book isn’t to make money. The first and foremost reason for publishing it is to see what the quality of book I can expect from Lulu. Secondly and this is probably even a bigger reason is I’m a complete and utter book junky. As such I’m keen on keeping copies of things. I pour a lot of effort into Broken Kode, and I’d like to have something I might look back at in 20 years time or whatever and see what mattered to me back in the day. I’ve always said this is my diary, except it’s online. Now I can get a hardcopy of it as well.
WinDirStat Very cool Windows stats program (open source software, which I always have time for).
I just finished reading this seminal work by the great Amin Maalouf, who is a fellow Lebanese. See before reading this book and researching into the other books that the man has written, I used to think that one of the greatest things to come out of Lebanon of Gibran Khalil Gibran (he of ‘The Prophet’ fame). I’ve read ‘The Prophet’, and honestly I wasn’t all that enamored. I remember clearly the first time I heard talked in depth about ‘The Prophet’ was in the most unlikely places with the most unlikely person. That’s a story for another time. After completing Leo the African, I can easily say that Amin Maalouf is the heir apparent for the best literary voice to have come out of that tiny little country.
One of the most important things that elevates a writer to becoming truely exceptional in his readers eyes, at least this is how I see it, is educating the reader. Not trying to show the reader how many longer words he knows, but showing him the depth of knowledge he pocesses in a way that doesn’t insult the reader. The obvious outcome is that the reader comes away actually having gained something more than simple entertainment.
Amin Maloouf writes historical fiction. However this isn’t the history I learnt at school. I would have killed to have these books when I was in school or in University. To study the time period discussed in this book would have been a dream.
Leo the African is written as though it’s the autobiography of Hasan al-Wazzan. This is a true story, with the obvious embellishments by Maalouf. Hasan was born in Granada during the fall of the Muslims from Spain. It tracks his life as he goes from one country to the next, experiencing the wonders and the horrors of the world in front of him. Leo the African is the story of travelling and discovery. It’s a story about religion in the hands of man.
Reading this book you get attached the characters in such a profound way. You feel his pain, and Maalouf uses a trick I only noticed clearly in storytelling terms when I was watching Babylon 5. The most interesting part of a story isn’t what happens, but rather the path or road to get there.
Even though the writer has already told you what the final outcome is, you can’t help but feel like you’re hoping the characters come out of it unscathed. Maalouf uses this technique to great effect during the entire book.
This book was not published in 2005, and even though it’s still relatively early to be thinking about Book of the Year type of thing, Leo the African is the one book I think I’ll remember in years to come as the stand out book I read this year.
I wrote this about ‘After the Empire’ and while both deal about completely different subjects I’m extremely lucky to have read them, and I honestly believe that everyone should at least have them on their shelves, with the full intent of reading them some day. You owe it to yourself.
So I’m talking to my brother yesterday. He’s in Greece where it’s a scortching 40 degrees, compared to the 15 degrees celcius we’ve got going in London right now. I remember that heat, and honestly don’t miss it. Not one bit. That heat where it’s hard to think, much less move.
Thing is though while I could imagine his feeling of heat, he goes I’m going to get a coke. So over the phone I hear him get a can, crack it open, here him slowly pour it into a glass, the ice cubes start cracklying on the side of the glass. He takes a nice long sip of it and ends it all off with a massive ‘AHHHH’. I’ve never wanted a coke so much in my life.
The whole experience reminded me of the Samuel Jackson scene in ‘Pulp Fiction’ where they’re at the apartment with the 4 kids, and he asks him if he could have some of his burger. Close up of the burger, and then the line
I can’t possibly be the only person who really wanted a Kahuna burger at the end of that scene.
Jonas sent me a baton on Sunday, but due to work I’ve just not had the time to finish this off. This baton kind of feeds from the baton of earlier last week. Joen feels that the baton is something used by weblogs to disguise for lack of content. Interesting point. I don’t really need the baton to help me get content (I’ve got like 15 drafts waiting to be tweaked and published), but something like this is remiss without me jumping all over it. The thing is though in many cases these batons are really just great ways to hear about something you’d be completely and utterly oblivious to.
The subject matter of this particular baton is very close and dear to me so it’s going to be a lot more than just a baton, just so you’re warned. As I said in my list of things to do this year, I really need to actually do some more Graphic Novel Reviews.
At home in Greece, I’ve got over 300 Graphic Novels (that’s comic books with Spines). Over in England never counted but they number well over 200 in the past 3 years. I’ve got over 2000 comic books in Greece.
I NEVER just buy 1 comic. It’s always a collection. Yesterday I bought the latest 100 Bullets Trade (much more on that later on in the post), all three Quantum & Woody trade paperbacks and Soulfire collected edition (because I’m a mug and I like great colouring).
Well since I read comics every single day, it’s usually several. So the ‘Right Now’ and ‘Last 5’ really don’t mean much to me (yes I’m that obsessed). Just finished/finishing:
See this is the hardest question of them all. By the sheer number of books that I buy and read on a regular daily basis, this could take a while. However I’ll try and keep it down to 10 series/runs or graphic novels.
For me however ANY book written by Alan Moore is golden literature. I buy stuff written by the man without hesitation, knowing full well he won’t ever let me down. It’s very rare for me to actually say this but the man is a genius. One of the few human beings alive today whom I truely admire the skill in which he performs his work, his art. Just a short cross section of works by the man include:
Forget the movie counter parts of some of these works. They hold absolutely no relation to the graphic novels. So much so that Moore made sure he’s disassociated himself from the movies, and accepts no money from them either. Sad really, but alas I can fully understand his reasoning. It’s not like Miller getting Sin City.
You know how they tell you to separate your normal files from your OS files. That way when your OS decides to crap up on you, because you know it will, at least you’ve got all your files on a separate drive? Yeah well what happens when you can’t seem to access your other drive without getting the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH staring at you? Partition Magic seems to let me browse and the copy and paste onto my other hard drive, which is cool. I guess I needed to back up everything. Here’s hoping I don’t have any problems with my DVD burner.
Strangely though during that 1 hour period that I thought I’d effectively lost all of my work, I was supremely calm. I could have flipped out but I didn’t. I kept my cool and just thought of which I files I had on my server, computer at work and on my gmail account. I’m currently using this little program to store all my important docs that are less than 10megs so that there’s more than one place that has them.
I suppose August brings in a new month, and I should really see it as a time of rebirth. Time to back up my files and assess what my priorities are.
Still though I need this like a HOLE in my head.
Whenever I go to Lebanon I always find it really weird but nice how the radio is local and in your face about it. You know what I’m talking about, really proud to be in this city or that, broadcasting live from the capital or whatever.
Ever since I moved to London I’ve not actually tried listening to any radio station. The main reason behind that is because the music is utter shite on the local radio stations. I mean seriously music that potentially makes my ears bleed. I’m sorry but it’s a tough for me to subject myself to constant repeated rubbish, day in day out.
The problem is by not listening to the local radio station I actually miss out on something very fundamental. News and information about the city I live in. Today to get me through work(it’s been exceptionally busy lately and I need anything to help me through the day as 12 hours of CAD design can seriously effect your manliness, ::ahem::). I’ve been listening to Capitol FM. Now most of the day was pretty poor, but the morning show was brilliant. The last time I actually heard/saw Johnny Vaughan was when he was doing the Big Breakfast, when I was in Nottingham. He’s lost nothing and really does give a good start to the day.
In direct comparison to say Richard Bacon who does The going home show. Now he’s really not all that great to listen to. He’s a bit of an asshole to the people that present the news, weather and traffic, so I’ve got absolutely no time for his stupid ass (just because he doesn’t seem to have much respect for the people around him). What’s really funny is the man seems to follow Johnny wherever he goes. Last I saw Richard Bacon he was following (or at least trying to follow) on from Johnny on the Big Breakfast. That show got cancelled shortly after.
So here’s the question, anyone have any good radio shows (with an internet feed) that actually plays good music?
Currently I’m fighting the most important deadline of the year at work. It’s the culmination of a year and a half’s work. 25 drawings need to go out tomorrow afternoon, and I’d say I’m about 90% done. I’ve got a least 1 day’s worth of work between now and then, and well obviously not enough time to fit it all in there.
The nice thing about these pressure times is how much better you get to know the people you’re working with. Usually the two mugs that end up in the office on weekends and after hours are the electrical and mechanical engineers, slogging away trying to meet the deadlines. The highlights of today were the breaks with Richard. We both share the same sense of humour, which is exceptionally important if you’re working stupid hours and you need something to relieve the tension.
Are we going to have everything ready for tomorrow? Not sure. Odds are against us that’s for sure. Last week passed and I swear I can’t even remember what the hell happened to it.
In addition to all that I’ve no doubt failed my french exam having completely blanked at the start of my presentation (even though I really had the whole thing clear in my head). Fine time to get stressed out, during the god damn exam. The entire week, never had any chance to get stressed out, so instead I went and bought it all out during the exam. I guess you live and learn, but between you and me (don’t mentioned this to Agnes) I really really didn’t deserve to pass. Didn’t give it the time it needed and deserved.
CSS Reboot Fall 2005. Well BK4 will be out long before then, but still pretty cool.
Just got my Alpha invite to Feedlounge, which as you can expect from the name is an online RSS feed aggregator. Why the hell would you want one of those you ask? Well if you’re like me, I like to keep on top of things both from home and from work. I’ll check my RSS feeds every few hours when I need a break and life goes on. For the posts that take a little longer than a mere glance at I kinda try and keep a mental note to check them out when I get home and have some better time to thing about them.
Problem is I keep adding feeds on a daily basis. This makes my home list massive compared to my work one. Add to the fact that NOTHING is sacred to the IT staff at work, and I’m stuck to thinking that there has to be a better way.
Enter Feedlounge. I’ve only played around with it for like 5 minutes and already I really like what I’m seeing. Bearing in mind that this is still in Alpha, it’s a very tidy little online application. The design is very minimal, but has all the information that is required.
There is a serious dollop of AJAX in there, and that does make things seem more like a desktop application, which is a very good thing. Hopefully with all the new alpha members little niggling things like horizontal scrolls with the scroll wheel will actually start working.
It’s going to take a really good online application to make me stop using Sage for Firefox, and this might be just the right thing.
Every once in a while you see something, read something, hear something that takes you back a few years and you start remembering all sorts of things in your life that seem to be from a different world; you were a different person, the world around you was completely different. The memory is so vivid that you even start remembering smells. That’s how I felt when I watched Leon again.
Leon (or as it was renamed in the US, The Professional) was released something over 10 years ago. I must have seen it a year or so after that. This was my first ever exposure to Luc Besson. I remember watching that movie and falling in love with every aspect of it. 10 years on I find that it lives up exceptionally well. Nothing looks dated, which is such an exceptional achievement in my opinion. This movie was probably the one movie that made me hunt down writer/directors before any other movie.
In case you haven’t seen it, go now and buy it, download it, rent it whatever, because you owe it to yourself to treat yourself to a classic. Story centers around Leon and Matilda. Leon is played by Jean Reno, Matilda is the 11 year old Natalie Portman. In the mix we’ve got Gary Oldman who very nearly steals the show, if it wasn’t for the exceptional acting by the two lead characters.
Set in New York, the story talks about the relationship a professional killer, or ‘Cleaner’ builds with an 11 year old girl as he trains her in the ways of the hired mafioso kill. We’ve got fantastic characters, corrupt cops, classic performances, and killer (no pun intended) action scenes. Not spoiling anything, but the movie also ends with what is the BEST movie song ending EVER, (‘Shape of my heart’ by Sting).
Now turn away because I’m going to start talking in detail about the movie. Consider this your SPOILER WARNING.
For those who haven’t seen the special edition, come closer while I tell you what you’ve been missing out on.
The special edition includes some seriously amazing additions. I remember when in University, people knowing my affection to the movie would always tell me of deleted scenes that had sex scenes between Leon and Matilda. I’m here to tell you that in fact that is COMPLETE and UTTER BOLLOCKS.
The movie has several new scenes, some of which I can’t believe he removed from the final cut. I think it was M. Night Shyamalan who said that directors generally end up removing their best scene from the final cut, and I think the Russian Roulette scene is easily one of my favorites of the entire movie. I’ve just got this hunch that Luc Besson felt the same thing about that scene as well.
My one main gripe however is that the director/writer of this movie wasn’t involved in the production of this DVD. I find that exceptionally strange as it seemed like such a personal project.
Most of the actors were on call for some interviews. Notable exception of course is Gary Oldman, who at the time of the movie’s release was the only ‘star’ in the credits. The movie obviously propelled everyone involved to another level, but Gary Oldman played the role in a manner no one else could come close to. I used to hear a lot of criticism that every single character that Oldman played was always over the top. In a way he was typecast, but at the same time in the best possible way. His Captain Gordon in Batman Begins was exceptional, his Dracula (which I’m not a fan of vampires) was brilliant, he was fantastic as the Devil in that 10minute movie directed by Tony Scott and Clive Owen in there. For my money however his role in Leon was him at his best.
If you were ever a fan of this movie, then it will be money well spent in getting this special edition version. It’s worth everything you pay for it and more.
Shawn sent me a book baton today. I like these ‘batons’. This is only the second one I’ve done but it’s good fun. Thing is though I generally write about the books that I’ve just read if I find that they deserve some mention etc, so some of the below is basically a recap in effect.
Leo the African by Amin Maalouf.
See this on is a tough one, because I could go on and on, and that’s without including all the great graphic novels I’ve read in my life, which I regard as some of the best things I’ve EVER read. So keeping it to just words, first of the list is
I’m sure I’m missing stuff on this list, but those are the ones that I can remember right now.
I’ve not been keeping up with my Robotech it would seem. To be honest 3 years ago when Tommy Yune (a brilliant Amerimanga artist/writer) was appointed as the ‘custodian’ of the Robotech methos I was just as excited as any kid who used to watch Robotech in the 80s would be; life was being pumped into the franchise again. Robotech was the first seriously cool animation that opened my eyes as to just how amazing Japanese animation can actually be.
I only got to finish the series years after the fact, but the first season still holds up pretty well. My love for the series was only fueled with the release of the exceptional Macross Plus during the late 90s. That was a brilliant Anime series. The story was superb, the animation was ahead of anything else out there at the time. The characters were very well done, the music was very memorable, and it was a very stylised series.
The Comic So after 3 years of waiting, we’re ready to see the next wave of Robotech. The new series by Wildstorm, with art by Udon seems like it’s going to be a complete monster hit (for the fans at least), and I’ve no doubt that Tommy and Jay will not disappoint with the story. What’s nice is that it actually ties into the upcoming movie release…
The Anime A sequel? Damn that could go both ways. I honestly didn’t know they were working on a movie. I know that the first Macross Movie was meant to get restored (has that been released yet?). Seems like the trailer for the movie (The Shadow Chronicles) was shown in San Diego, so that should be making the internet rounds soon enough. Target is for a late 2005 release, but I’ll bet it won’t be out till 2006 at least.
DMZ is (according to the Newsarama article):
Except the war zone is down town Manhattan. As Wood actually lives in NY, it’s kind of fitting that he should write stories set in his city. Another book I’ll be picking up for sure. Here’s hoping it’s another Channel Zero.
Now that I’ve infiltrated the 9Rules Network, I’m ready to blow the conspiracy wide open. It’s a complete lie. There aren’t 9 Rules. There are in fact only 8. I think Paul thought it would be funny to throw people of the scent.
Just to keep things on the level and completely REAL, here on the Kode, I present to you the 8 rules of the 9Rules Network, just so you also know what the deal is.
I swear I was about to go downstairs and throttle the twat in IT services. This guy effectively erased my bloody profile, screws up all of my Firefox settings, EVERYTHING was lost. I’m talking all the notes I’d downloaded, links, plugins, the whole lot. Screws my desktop up and then when I was like:
‘What the hell have you done to Firefox? All my notes, bookmarks? What’s going on?’
He had the gall to say to me: ‘Firefox, sorry mate we don’t support Firefox, why the hell are you using Firefox anyway?’
All I wanted to do was go downstairs and beat the living shit out of him. I’m not a violent person mind, but I draw the line at ignorant IT support on a power trip. He’s like public enemy No 1 in the office. Go shove your certified M$ ‘degree’ up your chav ass you fart knocker.
Like last year, I’ll be commenting on all the various bits and pieces coming out of the San Diego Comic Convention (biggest anglophone comic book convention, I think Angoulême in France is biggest, although I could be wrong). This will be mainly things that I’m interested in or excited about.
A lot of crap comes out SDCC, which is billed as news, but is essentially rubbish. It’ll be fun to try and see how accurate Rich Johnson is in his predictions. He’s usually spot on in most of his predictions. He does like to add a bit of salt and pepper to his stories but I enjoy his writing to check out his column every week, without fail.
This one is directly from Newsarama (probably where I’ll be ‘stealing’ most of my news from).
E-VILLE PRESS
Most interesting thing for me is as you would imagine that this is a bunch of guys from Pixar trying something different. I will be buying their first few projects for sure when it comes out. The break out projects for me are Colossus, Afterworks and Little India.
So I’m sitting there with Thomas a few weeks back, and we’re shooting the shit, and the conversation gets to music. This is something both Thomas and I feel very strongly about since our Uni days, and it’s great having these conversations with Thomas, for although we don’t see eye to eye on every single thing, we agree on more than not. We’re coming from roughly the same POV as it where. He’s got hip hop where I’ve got my electronica. What brings us together is the rock element. So the Top 10 question came up, and for once I decided to actually write it all down. This is the list of albums I think everyone should have on their shelf. I explain why they mean so much to me, or where I was when I heard them etc. In no particular order:
I have seen my country destroyed by war, I have seen how it’s effected people physically and mentally. Experienced an air raid and can remember very vividly how war can rip a country apart. A journey I made when I was no more than 8 years old with my father’s cousins, effectively set the course for what I want to achieve in this world (of which it sometimes feels I’ve not even begun that particular part of my life). They took us on a whirlwind tour of Lebanon, and we ended up in Beirut. Their aim was to have me experience Bliss House; a fresh fruit cocktail place (which I hold a very special place in my heart for) right opposite the AUB (American University of Beirut). We passed through streets upon streets of charcoal buildings, ready to fall over. Streets were filled with mud, children playing in the streets without any shoes. Bullet holes everywhere. From the cars to the buildings and everything in between. Scenes like this get burned into a person’s memory.
When Rafik was killed 6 months ago, this is what I feared would happen to the country again. For a while that is exactly what was being contemplate. As you can imagine that scared me. What followed was weekly bomb explosions all over the city. As asshole wanker cunts wanted to get some sort of reaction going from the people and pull them apart. This tactic was used in the 80s. Ignorance like this wasn’t going to be let through. While I was there (a little over a month ago) the editor of one of the most important Lebanese newspapers was killed in a car bomb during broad daylight.
I’ve become desensitized to bombs and destruction. London’s been my home for nearly 3 years now. I can actually finally feel comfortable, and at home here, as I did all those years ago in Nottingham. The attacks yesterday don’t' shock me, because I’ve seen this (and worse) countless times before. It upsets me sure, but it doesn’t shock me. However for the next couple of weeks I know what’s on everyone’s minds when they enter the tube. ‘What if a bomb goes off now?’ and a sense of claustrophobia kicks in and the wagon is too small for an ant.
As I’ve found out today, London is the most bombed city in all of Europe, so the police and all the emergency people were completely prepared for this situation, and they’ve seriously done an amazing job I’m sure of containing the casualties.
Aside: Turns out there wasn’t a bomb in Euston. What Stathi experienced was much worse, it’s just that he was in such a shock that he couldn’t express himself fully. Basically he was on the train after the one that blew up in Kings Cross. Everyone was evacuated from the tube station in Euston (which is one stop before King’s Cross). The streets were obviously packed, so he decided to walk to work rather than get a bus. At this point everything is still under the pretense that it’s a power surge. So he’s walked down the street and decides to grab a milkshake on his walk to Old Street.
After he gets out he walks to the corner and 20m in front of him the bus in Tavistock square blows up. In front of him. Smoke. Debris. He doesn’t wait, he just runs in the opposite direction. He’s not waiting for another bomb to go off.
At work there was no point in trying to do any work, there was absolutely no concentration.
Damn, not really sure how to react to all this. I’m writing this from work, which I almost never do. It’s just that I seriously can’t concentrate on anything. Everyone’s been phoning each other, making sure nothing was happening.
It only hit me that this was actually serious when I saw Stathis standing at my desk, COMPLETELY distraught. Up until then we were lead to believe that it was the tube system acting up again, which it does on a regular basis. He’d been in the Euston Station bomb (which has not been officially reported yet) and for a milkshake, he would have been in the thick of the bomb blast. As it transpired he only felt it and got some flying debris on his leg or something.
We’ve been told to stay put, so no one’s venturing out of the office for lunch or whatever. A bit extreme probably since I guess/hope the worst is over. Now comes the aftermath, the theories and the reactions.
So you want to know what Longhorn is going to look like? Go here and download away. I’ve been using CrystalXP for months, so it makes for a good change.
It’s been a long time coming, just needed to find a couple of hours to do the necessary dirty and sort it all out.
Now I’ve included the calander in the archive.php file, using the get_calander template tag, but for some reason it only shows the day which there was a post during that month. When you click on it the link goes nowhere. Anyone know what the deal is there?
I know there’s a slight conflict with a certain spam plugin, but I can’t find the information, so if you know what I’m talking about drop me a line.
Download Rin v1.1
So after my podcast experience with Augie I decided to look around the net for something that could restore both my faith and enthusiasm for the Podcasting format of delivering information. Luckily I didn’t have to travel very far. Part of the great thing about the new itunes upgrade is that you can search for feeds within the program itself based on the kind of content you’d like to hear.
So I find where Augie’s podcast is listed and looked for something/ANYTHING that could be of interest. 3 words popped out at me.
COMIC GEEK SPEAK
Sweet. I quickly downloaded a couple of tracks (actually I downloaded all 33 episodes before I actually listened to any of them, the joys of 8MEG broadband meant that it took all of 3 minutes to download everything). Thank god for these guys. It’s not one person podcasting, but roughly 4 to 5 guys that get around at I guess it’s Brian Deemer’s house and record the podcast. I’ve not gotten through all of them (these things clock in at 1 hour sometimes), but they are supremely entertaining.
I miss that interaction with other comic book geeks like you wouldn’t believe, and this is where I explain the title of the post.
Solaris comics was/is (I’m not sure if it’s still in business) the premiere spot for comic books in Athens during the 90s. I remember clearly the first day I went into the store, it was a day I’ll remember forever. I’m 14 and for the past year I’ve been reading superhero comics from the newsstand. The selection was limited to specific DC Comics. This was during the whole ‘Death of Superman’ storyline, so everyone and their donkey was reading comics at the time. I was reading comics before that but mainly Archie and Jughead comics, and MAD magazine. So I’m talking to John Consolas in school who was also into comics and he tells me of this store in downtown Athens that is a comic store.
‘You serious, a comic store in Athens? Wanna go this weekend?’ ‘Sure. 12 o’clock, in front of Wendy’s?’ ‘Great’
John never showed up. I was stuck waiting for him for an hour and a half. Back then there was no cellphones going around for kids. All I had to go on was the name of the street the shop was located on. I was determined not to let my guide keep me away from my comic book nirvana. So I went to the tourist information office (which happened to be 1 minute from where we were supposed to meet) and asked them to give me a map with the street marked on it. 5 minutes later I was off.
I swear I was jogging to get there quicker. I’d been dreaming about this place and what kind of books it might have that would interest me. This was around the time Image Comics was making the rounds and Valiant was about to explode onto the scene. My little heart was beating hard as I turned around a corner and got to Botasi street.
There it is I see the sign, ‘Solaris Comics’. The store was separated into two section. The right hand side was a book store, mainly Greek books, while the right hand side had the trade paperbacks and comics EVERYWHERE. No it wasn’t as large as I imagined it, but that was OK. It had all the comics I was looking for, or at least it was a start. I’m there and I’m just picking up one comic after the other, I’ve reached 20 and it’s JUST NOT ENOUGH. It’s completely overwhelming. I’m completely engrossed and I get this tap on my shoulder and a guy in his late 30s, early 40s I guess beams a smile at me and asks me if he can help me out. This was the start of a friendship I hold very close to my heart. The man was Panayotis Kondras (check out the very last photo right at the bottom of the page, he’s the guy on the right hand side). He was the guy that would show me the ropes of comics. He was essentially my comic pimp. He now owns a great store in Athens called Relax Your Soul (Solomou 5A, Exarchia, Athens, Greece) .
Over the years Panayotis saw me grow, go back and forth to University, but I’d always go back to the store. Even if I wasn’t buying anything, just to talk comics with a bunch of like minded geeks. Great friendships I miss dearly are with George, Katerina, Panayotis, Kostas and Nickos.
This podcast Comic Geek Speak reminded me of those great times, where life was slightly simpler for me, and comics were magic. Thanks guys.
ONG-BAK. The best MAN-FLICK I’ve seen in a very long while.It’s completely RAW and the fact that it was done without all the wires and cgi that is found in every single martial arts type movie this is a massive fresh of breath air.
I can’t remember much of my early life; I’ve got a pretty poor memory when it comes to things that happen to me. That’s actually part of the reason for keep and maintaining a blog. It helps me to actually categorise and file my memories away for later consumption. Of course there are numerous other reasons for blogging, but this isn’t what this post is about.
One of my earliest memories was waking up in one of the beds of our neighbors. It wasn’t completely weird as I used to live in their house anyway so it wasn’t really strange being in their house, just not where I was expecting to wake up. Naturally I asked what the deal was, but they wouldn’t tell me.
Later on in the day I heard the car, or the bell rang, can’t honestly remember, but I remember running down the stairs (we used to live in a house that was separated into 3 apartments, ground, first and second), to see what the deal was. Why had they trixed me? Where had they gone without me?
Did they get me a new present? No not Lego, I got some small fella in a blue rectangular cot; and I remember my mother’s beaming smile.
I don’t remember much of my early life, but I remember the day my brother came into this world, 21 years ago today.
Happy Birthday Bro.
So I finally got round to hearing my first set of Podcasts. These were courtesy of Augie De Blick (it’s funny by Augie’s been on the default WP theme for like over a year now, first time I’ve seen him do anything to that site is add that logo of his, which btw is a pretty recent addition, something to be said about simplicity).
I’ve been reading his column Pipeline for the better part of what 4 years now, or something stupid like that. I don’t generally agree with the man, some things I think he’s completely wrong about, but I like his professionalism of delivering his column every week, sometimes more than once a week. He reminds me of the things to look out for in the coming week, and every once in a while he’ll turn my attention to something I hadn’t heard about that I might find interesting.
So seeing as he’s been doing the Podcasting rounds since January. With the addition of podcasting integrated in itunes, I thought that I’d give the man a shot and see what he’s got to say for himself, literally. I was actually pretty excited about the whole thing, since it’s like selective Internet radio about stuff that actually truly interest me. Soo off I went and downloaded the files via the excellent upgrade done to itunes now that has the option to include for Podcasts, and I was away.
The first thing that rubbed me the wrong way, well was Augie’s voice. Well no that’s harsh, it’s actually the delivery that really made me sit up and at times cringe. Augie dude I’m not saying this for any other reason but since you’re the only comic book podcaster with a bit of pedigree and cbr’s backing, you’ve got to expect assholes like me taking pot shots at you. So I’ll try and give a couple of points that I think would enhance the experience considerably.
So this experience actually got me thinking about the whole podcasting thing. I will eventually get round to doing a couple of these (once I get a microphone). I think I’ve got one of the worst voices around there. I can’t be the only person that hates the sound of their voice when they hear a recording,..right? Having said that, I think this podcasting is a pretty cool way of getting thoughts across faster than having them written down.
Just finished Kevin Smith’s collection of essays and articles, called ‘Silent Bob Speaks’ (his blog is called the same btw), and I’ve got to say that the man is one of the funniest guys around right now. A lot of his humor is directed at himself, as he’s got this exceptional mechanism to take whatever situation and turn it on it’s head.
As I was getting into Kevin Smith fever again, I downloaded his interview with Jay Leno that talked about Clerks 2: The passion of the clerks. God Jay Leno didn’t know what to do with himself. Here was a guy that completely outstaged him, made him feel uncomfortable. They should give Kevin Smith a talk show and have him ENTERTAIN your ass for like 30 minutes.
I was shocked when I saw his recent look though. He’s sporting a mullet with a growing bald patch right round the back, which honestly Kev isn’t all that great on so many levels (not the balding since you really can’t do anything about that, but the mullet?) . Like I said, his defence was that Jay should let the ‘lesbian trucker’ (about himself) on first before the hot babes (some chick from the OC was on before him).
One of the very few Alan Moore graphic novels I’ve not had the chance to sit down and read. I know, shocking. I’m an absolute Alan Moore nut. Even on a day of bad digestion where he’s trying to knock off a few pages to get some money (to feed his cats) and while he’s struggling to understand why we all exist Moore could write circles around EVERY SINGLE WRITER on the planet. In ANY medium. The man knows no boundaries and his visions are better formed than most people’s lives.
So what hope do I have that this movie will be better than previous Alan Moore incarnations? Well lets consider previous endevours into translating Moore’s vision to the silver screen:
I hold little hope for V for Vendetta. I really would, but history repeats itself far too often. However with Moore disassociating himself completely from the movie, we’re left thinking, hmm another turd? Still though, that’s a pretty amazing poster…
forgetfoo is this crazy blog that takes AJAX to the next level. I absolutely love what he’s done with the functionality. Not so keen on the overall design (liquid and all) but it’s a spectacular effort.
I’ve spent over 24hours straight on my computer in the last 2 days. Truthfully speaking this really was a long time coming. I didn’t go anywhere (except to the supermarket) and just spent all day ‘drawing’. Now I’m inverting it because I’m very traditional when it comes to my classification of artwork in general. My brain finds it difficult to call digital artwork (the kind that was done completely on the computer), well artwork. There’s no paint to be cleared. No pencil sharpenings and most importantly no paper, end product.
All my work (www.emmortel.com) is done first on paper, then scanned in and redone on the computer for the crispness if that is indeed what I want (recently that’s not been the case).
Broken Kode V4: Saida I concentrated on two drawings. The first will eventually form the basis around which Broken Kode V4 is based upon. The running name for that is Saida (as that’s where I actually drew and inked the drawing). When I started colouring this one in, it just felt all wrong. As if I really didn’t know where I was going. I find that choosing the right colours is sometimes one of the hardest things in a drawing. That’s why I sometimes like to flick through all the various blending modes in photoshop, incase a colour contrast works well for me. Saturday I was able to crack this tough nut and get it to a pretty good area, which hopefully I’ll build upon for my mock up.
Human? I’m such a dick. I have less than 4 days to finish this drawing off and actually send it off to the editors. This is for that book I’ll be contributing to. Cutting it terribly fine is a complete understatement. The thing is though, and this is true, I just didn’t have any particular inspiration for the topic. It’s not the topic’s fault, but I wanted this to be special. So I kept writing notes in my moleskin to try and flesh out all the avenues in front of me.
Yesterday inbetween work on ‘Saida’ I got the inspiration and the ideas started flowin through. In fact there were too many ideas, that I actually thought I wasn’t going to be able to incorporate them all. I’m 70% there. Just need one more quadrant and this should be finished.
It’s been a seriously tough weekend, productive to say the least, why is that we only push ourselves when there’s a deadline, rather than taking it easy and doing the job correctly over a decent period of time? It’s not like I didn’t have ample time to prepare for this particular project. Live and learn I guess.
Sorry I just had to put this up. Picture taken today (via the bbc website) of the tents at the Glastonbury Festival. There’s rain and then there’s rain. Tracey and Rupert are down there, Stathi is meant to be going down there as well. God I’m so glad I’m not going, oh so glad. Related links: BBC Glastonbury Festival section.
Shit. See I knew this was coming but like someone who just doesn’t want to get on the scales because they’re afraid what they’re going to see, I chose to ignore the inevitable. With BMW effectively buying out Peter Sauber, their commitment to Williams will obviously be secondary to their team proper. That’s just the nature of the beast.
As a Williams fan that’s a serious blow, since I really liked the BMW-Williams combination, but I guess it’s been less than successful in the last couple of years. So what’s the news now for Williams? I’m hoping that we keep Nick Heidfeld, and I’m not going to say I told you so about his break out season, but I told you so. That I think is essentially the worst part of the entire thing for me, the prospect of loosing my favourite driver at the moment to the (in my view) second rate Jenson Button.
In terms of actual engine suppliers I guess my favourite for the supply of Williams would be Cosworth, since the Lexus idea is a bit rubbish in my view, and a Honda engine would have been pretty crap since it would have blown up every time they raced. Will Williams last the test of time, or will the rest of the car manufacturers take over the rest of the sport?
What the fuck? Was I sleeping at the wheel when this happened? So go check this little link out will you. Apart from the very nice Optimus Prime right in the front and centre of the image, check right behind, oh yes is that the cover to Northern Lights? I think it is.
The Fantasy Comes to life in 2007.
I personaly can’t wait. I’ll have to write a much more in depth post about my love for His Dark Materials. It deserves several posts in fact. A little research and we’ve got the following site. Once I’ve got a bit more time I’ll investigate further.
Right this is the first time I’ve sent an actual question/request to Dreamhost since I started with them a while back. The question was why we don’t have pspell module on the server. One of the things that I would love to have in Shuttle would be the facility to have a spell checker, like the one used by gmail, however as I’ve found out for myself that requires certain things to be installed on your server in order for such things to be feasible.
It’s a crying shame, since it’s freely available and part of php, so I’m perplexed it’s not installed as standard. Now the nice people at Dreamhost have contacted me in less than 12 hours asking me what the modules are and that they should be able to get it up and running, hopefully. Let’s see. It’s really a test for many things. Your web hosting selection goes through a real test when there’s a problem or a question or feature at hand, and how they actually go about it and deal with it is what makes you decide to continue with them or move to greener pastures.
Lack of support issues where what made me leave my previous host. It’s intersting since the DO forums have been playing up big time in the last couple of months with constant down times. MT ain’t so great after all :).
BadApple software from BadFruit presents an ipod plugin that provides itunes with podcasting support. I’ll try this tonight and see if I can get into this pod casting malarky.
So I’ve been looking at Shaun Inman’s new design. The man knows how to innovate in terms of web design that’s for sure. My main gripe with the design is that all the text is just too damn small. It looks good for sure, but in terms of it’s legibility it doesn’t score many points, especially since he’s chosen a light grey on the white background. I’ve looked at the site using both a CRT and a TFT, and both just didn’t present the content, the words, the meat and potatoes of the design in a clear way; at least that’s the way I’m seeing it.
What’s impressed me the most about this design however is the fact that he’s got so much crazy-cool (I’m starting to sound like that fucking annoying Honda ad) javascipt going all over the place, adding to some great functionality of the site, which increases his joy of surfing his site. I love how he’s done the expanding and contracting archives page, and he’s RSS feed system is very cool indeed. Of course I can’t forget the fact that he’s got the crazy drop down menu both at the top and bottom, which again is very inspired.
From the design front I really like what he’s done for sifting through his comments and comment form. Whenever I think about this I always wonder why I never actually actively post comments on different sites. I do have certain things to say, but I guess I get lazy. Still though this is something I’ve noticed about my blogging and blog-reading manner. Mental note start commenting on people’s blogs more.
For all those experiencing the problem, and do miss the dashboard (I for one think it looks bloody empy), go check out this little fix from the forums.
[quickpic image=bc.jpg]
Yesterday I saw Billy Corgan at the Forum in Kentish Town. The venue itself is very much like Shepherd’s Bush, only slightly smaller I think. It’s an old victorian theatre I guess (I could be completely wrong); you’ve got an upstairs seating area, and then the downstairs stand and roam area; Stathi, Yiota and I were downstairs.
Gliss The support act were a band called Gliss. Go download a couple of tracks from their website, seriously you won’t be disappointed. Crazy fucking band man. The come on stage and theres 2 guys and a girl, each carrying a guitar or base. No drummer in sight, but you can’t fool me there’s a drum kit right there, that can’t be for Corgan, what’s going on here? So they start off and I’m thinking, ah I get it, just like when the pumpkins started off. They had D’arcy on base, Iha and Billy on guitar leaving the drum machine to do the drumming. I was actually smiling at this little fact. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After a couple of tracks the lead singer decides he wants to try his hand on the drum kit, and so while drumming is also singing. Then the other guitarist switches places with the drummer, and the guitar and base get switched over as well.
The final switch as you would imagine was the woman taking over the drumming for the last couple of songs. I actually enjoyed the support act. I’ve been pretty lucky these last two times I’ve gone to a gig.
Billy Arrives Of course he was great, what did you expect me to say? The stage had to be set up, and there was this white wall of squares behind him. An Apple in the corner, the weirdest looking electronic drum set and a keyboard with seashells on it. He came on wearing this blue/black jacket, this hat and black trousers. I’ve been reading the making of his latest album as long as I’ve been blogging and I’ve wanted to see what he would come up with if he went solo, and this was the result.
The first couple of tracks were a mixture of rocky elements and electronic sounds. They had the unmistakable Corgan sound. It’s the mixture of the way he plays the guitar and his voice. The mac as far as I could tell controlled the electronic board behind them. It was pretty cool gave for a very 70s/80s electronica rock atomsphere. There was this song that broke out as one of my favourites apart from Walking Shade which is the first single. This song had a Zero or Everlasting Gaze type quality, in that he’d be rocking hard, then stop, shout something into the mike with absolutely no other music just his voice and then start rocking again. Also a cover of the Bee Gees ‘To Love Someone’ was pretty cool, didn’t expect it, but found myself hmming to it, and then looking at Yiota to confirm she knew the song as well :).
This wasn’t a moshing crowd, although there were two idiot trunks in the audience who really felt it was, more on these twats later (why am I constantly hounded by absolute assholes whenever I go out? Trust me the general concensus by everyone in that area of the forum was that these two were in fact twats, hell even the bouncer had words). The drunk idiots decided to name call Billy a couple of times, which I swear I couldn’t understand. I mean calling the man a twat was just something I couldn’t understand for the life of me. There was also some seriously annoying couple that couldn’t stop porn tounging themselves. Just completely unnecessary.
Is this going to be as big as The Smashing Pumpkins? No, I’ll go out on a limb and say that particular era is over, this is something different, doesn’t achieve that greatness, but Billy Corgan on a bad day is better than 95% of the music out there. This is Billy on a good day.
If you missed part 1, scroll down to get the heads up.
Day two and after a big night on the town of Manchester, a £12 breakfast that Sylvane is still shaking his head about, and we’re off to the basketball centre again. We all were feeling pretty confident about ourselves, thinking we’d worked out who our next opponents were.
Velocity were in for a rude awakening that crispy Sunday morning, as KPMG came out on the court with the aim to win and not get intimidated. KPMG had this superstar three point shooter. I don’t use that term very lightly. He was taking shots from places you seriously wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to reach the basket much less get them in, but he was draining them left right and centre. Fade away threes, falling down, with 2 people marking him and yet he’d still make them in.
Fortunately for us Nick was taking notes, since we were set to play the winner of this game. The game started off, and KPMG scored a quick 3. Nick answered back straight away with another 3. The first 35 minutes of the game was a show of complete harmonised team. Some how somewhere our old problem of defeating in the last 5 minutes of a game came back to haunt us, and from a 13 point lead, the last 1 minute of the game was spent trying hard not to let anyone score a single point. Hamish got fouled in the last 30 seconds and went to the foul line we’re 3 points ahead. No score change after Hamish’s free throws, and KPMG have the ball for the offensive. They got 2 three point shots out, fortunately none of them hit their target.
Time was called and we’d made it into the semi-finals. We made it harder on ourselves to win that game but win it we did. Our opponent in the semi-finals were the local band of Mercs, The Roccos.
Now I call them Mercs, although I could be completely off base here and the guys might actually work for whoever it is they work for, but something tells me that they’re a local team, with a nice selection of large dirty players. Dirty because they play hard using elbows and any other attack at their disposal to bully teams into not going for drives, not playing hard defence etc.
These guys were big. Just physically big. They had their professionally printed shirts and kits, their own mini bus and a group of pretty cheer leaders to I guess cheer them on.
End of the first half and we were 2 points down. 16-14. This was seriously something none of us expected. The team to beat and here we had them on the ropes. At this point I’m going to hammer the referees but please don’t see this as bad grapes. It’s just that the refs in the tournament were seriously young and inexperienced. Not all of them mind you but a healthy cross section of them.
Unfortunately we had a problem with one of the refs who was no more than 20 years old or something that had to confirm every single call from the other ref, and couldn’t stand up even though he knew it was a wrong call or whatever. The other ref was just making some rules as he went along. It’s tough playing a game against such a strong opponent and the ref not being able to at least make some decent calls. We didn’t have this problem with any of the other refs, just with 2 of them.
Unfortunately that fire we had in the first half disappeared in the second half, and we ended up with our first defeat. None of us were upset by this, as this was effectively our first defeat and we’d already achieved a better result to last year.
We had one more team, bunch of Kiwi’s who obviously had played together, as they were calling various plays, were all pretty big in general, but well tempered and generally pleasant to play against. In another time or place we would have had them, but our game against the Rocco’s did wipe out our resources and our offence didn’t have the bite it did earlier that morning. Final result was 4th place in a 16 team tournament.
The greatest thing about a weekend like that though is the team bonding. It’s a great feeling being part of a team that tries it’s best to achieve something. It seems that it’s been a mantra that one man can make a difference. That’s true, but a team working towards that difference is better, because at the end of it all and after time has passed by the memories of that particular time are there to be shared, and will be that much more poignant.
Well this is for all the guys especially for my main mun Fadi in California who I am sharing the opportunity of getting into MR BROKENKODE’s blogg. You could say that I have successfully managed to verbally hack myself into BK’s blogg.
So here go’s….
Callet as I call him is a man of many words… you may have realized as when you type in the word ‘Khaled’ in google his name pops up within the first search results page. His words are taking over and thanks to him when you type in ‘Stathis’ ( ME- the hacker) my name pops up in the first page of the search results too.
Well… there is so much too say and so little space… did you guys know that he has a little black book in which you may be having a conversation with him and he may randomly pull it out and start jotting what ever is on his mind in between the conversation that you have been having with him. I know… I know it may come across as rude but I like to think of it in the sense that I inspire him. And he has a pink pen. what is that about!!! (pink, purple and turquoise actually). He said to me that Picasso and Ernest Hemmingway used to have the same type of black book in which they would jot down all their ideas down. But, I am willing to bet a huge wage that they didn’t write in pink ink. Damn!
I can tell you a lot more of these little stories about Xaloot but I haven’t been given the space (a small problem in my hacking technique but I am working on it) and secondly he will probably end up editing them out. But what I can do is throw in some key phrases in which you can bug him as much as you want to find out more behind the story. So here goes:
I originally thought we’d have completed Shuttle a while back. Alas that has not been the case. I don’t want to say I underestimated the work, but rather, the project itself evolved into so much more than just a tweak to the css file. The reason I thought I’d talk about this is because of the recent releases of two excellent admin beautifications for WordPress. Both SpotPress and the Tiger Admin skins are excellent examples of how the current default admin can be improved upon.
I love the fact that Joe made SpotPress into a plugin, just shows how versatile the WordPress architecture actually is. Steve Smith has kindly jumped into the whole issue and knocked it completely out the park with his Tiger Admin Skin. See if the man had released this 5 months ago, honestly I wouldn’t have bothered with Shuttle and I bet it would have eventually made it into the core WordPress admin, much like Kubrick made it as the default theme for WordPress. The Tiger admin modification has seriously enhanced my WordPress user experience. It’s very subtle and slick all in one.
The thing is though, we’re actually making some progress with Shuttle. It’s not finished, hell the coding hasn’t even started yet (well not exactly, those of you that are on the ball with regards to WordPress development might have picked something new up…). There is a lot of work that still needs to be done, however as some people have come to understand, we’re not just talking about modifying a css file. The project is a great deal more involved than that. This project tackles functionality as well as beauty and when it’s released a few more issues you might be surprised about.
I suppose I wanted to make sure everyone understood that we’re completely and utterly behind this project and while I love Tiger, I can’t wait for the day I start using Shuttle, simply because to me it’s more WordPressy. A natural progression of the WordPress Admin interface.
I must say that the Tiger admin panel definitely pumped me up for tackling the project full on and trying if anything to solve those dead ends we’ve been hitting. It’s been a very busy couple of months for many of us, and as such the project has taken a hit. That’s being rectified. I wish I could give a date when this is going to be released, but I don’t see it happening for a good few months to come. Maybe September sometime might be a good target, really depends on a number of factors.
Sylvane, Oola, Archie, Hamish, Matt, Forest, Me, Nicholas and Rob.
This was the second time the Arup basketball team entered the Corporate Games tournament. Last year we went up there, not really knowning what level of basketball to expect. The result we came out with was 6th of 16 teams. Even though it felt like we practiced more last year, this year it felt better as a team going up there.
The rules asked for 9 players on the team. With Richard and Matt gone (Thomas was at a wedding), Hamish, Rob and Big Matt stepped in to fill the void. Last year the event was held in Newcastle. This year it was held in Manchester. It’s nice for a change of pace, although Newcastle does hold a dear and special place in our hearts as it was such a unique place.
Again like last year there were 16 teams present. The companies represented included : Vodafone, IBM, Ernst and Young, Velocity, KPMG, ARUP and of course the local group of mercenaries, Raiders, or Roccos or @$$holes (more about this delightful group of people later on).
So we started our first game in flying colours. We played our game, but we were noticably nervous. The team we were playing obviously lacked the skill and experience to present us with any real problems, but we just had those jitters that you get when you’ve been training for 3 months and the day is finally upon you. Once we got rid of those, that was it game over. By the second half I can’t remember if they actually put many baskets in. I think we let them put in a total of 13 points or something like that, to our 40 or so.
This was a show for our defence. Rock solid is the only way to describe it, with the opposition putting in a total of 2 baskets in the entire game. The thing is though, although we could have gone even more, there really was no reason to tire ourselves. This wasn’t a question of humiliation, because that’s really not how our team works. We don’t go screaming in the teams face and trash talk them. We concentrate on what we’re doing and that’s it. Theres a reason I’m saying this as will become apparent later on when I talk about Velocity.
Saw us against a team of better quality. The team fought for the victory, by shutting down their key players completely. At this stage in the game no one had tried to mark us man to man, and that’s exactly what we played throughout the tournament. This team had some decent players but those players couldn’t do anything because the d was that tight. However after the first half we weren’t in a comfortable lead, and that caused us to have to fight for the win. We ended up getting 2 technical fouls and a series of bad calls from the refs. It’s important to note the refs in this game were also the refs in our most important game against the Roccos which I’ll get to later on. Once the nerves fell, we gathered our composured and were able to get the win.
End of the first day saw us at the top of our pool, having won all three of our games.
From the other team present we felt that Velocity and Roccos were the favourites. Velocity was a team mainly made of young guys (oldest probably 21 or something), who had individually great athletic abilities. One of the guys there could seriously fly. His vertical was completely ridiculous, I’m serious, this wasn’t something you worked at. This was something you were born with. Unfortunately there was a lovely bit of attitude attached to that, which is not something you’re born with, rather something you work at.
So we watched them play an inexperienced team, and as you would expect they hammered them. The difference between the hammering we gave and the hammering they administered was in the attitude. It wasn’t enough to beat someone, you had to humiliate them. This as you would expect really didn’t sit very well with any of us.
A little later on they played our buddies from last year Ernest and Young. We only caught the tail end of that game, but Velocity actually lost. They obviously felt done hard, however it was clear from that point that while they were great individually they couldn’t play as a team. “You are a horrible boy” was how one of Velocity’s guy’s mum decided to describe one of the characters of the actual tournament (Yousef). A guy with lots of heart and a good all round player, that doesn’t stop at just playing the game, but adds a bit of tongue and cheek in his play, which is why we talked after the game. The words were bitter and stupid. No woman he’s not a horrible boy, your son is a twat. Basketball isn’t about the individual, it’s played by a team. One superstar can’t make the team win. As it turned out neither could 5 superstars.
What we didn’t expect was KPMG to beat them as well in the next round. So as it turned out rather than playing Velocity we ended up playing KPMG, and their superstar three point shooter..
END OF PART 1.
Tomorrow we’re off up to Manchester for the Corporate Games. The irony of the name is seriously not lost on me. I hate the word and what it implies. However Arup is not a corporation, so I feel slightly better about it all. Crap name, and rubbish website. For the uninitiated, these are games organised several times throughout the year, where companies from all of the country and I guess all over the world represent their company in a tournament of their prefered sport. There is a massive cross-section of sports available to participate in.
We’ll be representing for the Arup team. Last year we did ok since we’d never been up there before, so we really didn’t know what to expect. We made several mistakes, but bonded as only a team can bond. Last year we came sixth. This year we won’t be happy unless we get into the top 4! Yay I love the confidence, if I’m eating humble pie on Monday nobody mention this post ok. I want to give a massive shout out for Dree-Dog who will be sorely missed in this tournament. The ‘GARBAGE MAN’ is an asset that any team would be proud to have as part of their arsenal, should have made it down man.
I’ve got so many posts waiting to be published, but every since I got back from Lebanon I’ve been seriously busy every single day, both in and out of work. Hopefully next week will be slightly more relaxed and I’ll be able to get some writing done and make a bit more of a dent in all the blasted projects.
Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me about Spotpress? I can see that James has posted about it. I’m using it until those lazy a$$s release Shuttle :p.
7 Sons of Suckerfish articles are now available on htmldog. Good web design resource in case you missed it.
A while back Pankaj e-mailed me to ask me if I’d be willing to answer a few questions for a Hindi blogzine Nirantar he was working on that was going to concentrate on WordPress. I was more than happy to answer the man’s questions. The catch was of course that the final interview would be in Hindi. You can see it right here in all it’s glory. However if your Hindi is a bit rusty like mine, then here’s the English version. To spice things up I’ve decided to include some early mock ups of Manji so that you can see where I was originally heading with the design.
Started off with WordPress over a year ago. This was right after Moveable Type decided to sell out and shoot everyone who contributed to the initial success of the product in the foot. From the plugin developers, to the beta testers, etc, it just felt really wrong to continue using that system even though it was a pretty good looking package.
I started hunting around, and came down to Textpattern, WordPress and one more system which I can’t for the life of me remember. At that time there was a lot of reviews popping up all over the place with people jumping ship. I actually actively started hunting down for an alternative the very same night, even though, and I remember this clearly I’d just finished skinning and learning the basic tag structure for Moveable Type.
There was a bit of confusion at the time regarding the license for Textpattern, and I was not having that again, so I went for WordPress, mainly because it was fun to install, and funnily enough, with Scripty Goddess jumped ship to the same platform, I didn’t need any more endorsement than that.
Originally I used to only post on the Showcase section of the forums, mainly because that was one area I knew I could contribute to. If someone came up with a design I might be able to help them out. Now around this time when I began getting to grips with everything Michael released Kubrick, and the Internet was never the same :).
Problem was that Michael did such a good job of it that EVERYONE and their dog had a Kubrick themed blog. Nothing wrong with that, but variety breeds for a healthier environment, which is why it’s good to have alternatives.
Another reason, and really the main reason for Manji was because I wanted to contribute to the WordPress community. I felt that this was a community that really deserves my attention and I wanted to give something back for this code that others where spending hours upon hours perfecting and tweaking etc. It’s the great things about an open source community, you can have as much or as little involvement as you care for.
Okay so I wanted to give something to the wordpress community. What the hell are web standards? Why is everyone soo keen on not using tables? I threw myself into reading up on these things, and came to the conclusion that well, I’m not a programmer. There was a lot (still a lot) for me to learn and implement in a good and useful way. Sure I could come up with a nice pretty design, but my code would have been aweful.
So I took a page from my day job. Architects design, Engineers make it happen. Except I reversed the roles in this case, and I was the architect. Hanging out on the forums it was very clear who could css himself out of any situation, and that was Root.
I contacted Root and asked him if he’d be interested in this little endeavour. He was well up for it, and we started work. He originally wanted to just watch and add and tweak, but after I started making a complete potato of the design (see the original Manji mock up), it became clear that I should stay away from the original structure, and come in later and add and tweak to suit the design, you know all the details that designers have to get right.
We started development when Wordpress was still in version 1.3 Alpha 2 or something like that, the theme changer had just been implemented and so I set up a dev blog that we both had access to and got to work.
At the peak of production I remember one Sunday where we spent 14 hours solid online (barring toilet breaks and food) till we got all the structure sorted out. It was truly amazing to watch where we started to where we got to in the course of the day.
Root unfortunately had to leave when we were 80% complete, and so I had the daunting task to try and finish off the coding. In the process, David Prince came aboard and helped me out sort a few things, and it was nice to have someone else to talk to as, I’d gotten used to is.
Finally Joshua stepped in since he was making loads of excellent comments upon the initial release of Manji, which I’d like to add was the first theme for 1.5 apart from the classic and default, Chris Davis came back with Persian converted like a day later, but still, beat you by a day Chris :P.
I’ve been online since 1997. When I say online, I mean part of a message board or whatever. Blogging has created something a lot more personal. All those messages that I wrote have been lost into the ether, whereas the words on my blog are mine forever. I put a lot more attention and effort into them and as such a lot more of me comes out.
WordPress is being improved as we speak. After the theme I got to thinking that the one thing I don’t like about WordPress was the administration panel. So I contacted all the people I thought would be interested in doing something about it. A little later Michael got the same thought, so I contacted him and asked him to join in on the project, to which he was more than happy to do. That’s when the message got skewed and Matt thought that we were actually forking. After explaining that this wasn’t the case Matt’s come on board as well. Joen joined us just after, and we’ve got some lurkers (notably Ryan Boren) as well chipping into conversations here and there.
We’ve got a mockup of the admin panel, but it changes every time it gets sent around but I will say that everyone on the team is pretty excited with the initial ideas we’ve been throwing around and everyone can’t wait to start using it.
By the time we’re though there won’t be any reason for anyone not to use WordPress, it will be the classiest LOOKING and functioning weblog authoring tool on the net. Free and yet Priceless.
Two days ago officially marked one year of Broken Kode. What a year it’s been. Although I’ve been blogging for a little while longer (1.5 years), I didn’t buy the domain name till I was completely happy with WordPress as the defacto blogging tool I wanted to use, instead of Moveable Type. I originally thought it was the 6th of June, alas my blog never lies, and I stand corrected.
Here’s what the site looked like for 1 week before MT got it’s license rubbish done and forced a mass exodus to happy alternatives. I’ve never, not once looked back. The site has gone through roughly 3.5 version changes (0.5 since one really didn’t last all that long, and wasn’t a complete redesign, only the index page).
This was me learning the ropes. I just had an idea, which was content was to be the centre of everything. Simplicity was the essence in this design. It’s a bit of a shame that I don’t have this design as a theme. The design lasted 7 months. Which currently is the record to beat really.
Following the release of Manji, I decided to use the code for a theme. From there CoCo was born. Again I learnt a lot in the transition from one design to the other. This version lasted a month and a half. I know, weak. The problem wasn’t with the site design itself, but rather the fact that the use of the site changed so much. It wasn’t clear for people to find what they were looking for. So I tweaked.
My favourite part of this design was the ‘New and Improved’ star. It added that fun element to the whole design. This ‘design’ lasted less than a month.
What you see now is what I’ve dubbed Version 3. Sure the graphic stays the same but a lot was added to this particular version. I learnt a lot moving into this version as I had a slew of ideas I wanted to implement. I introduced the snippets to the site, which is a major addition. I got to grips with a decent three column design.
I’ve been working on this version for a while now. It’s an idea that blossomed into something that I think I can be very proud of. Once that version is done, I’m seriously considering not redesigning for an entire year. I know based on the above that would be a very tall order. The fact of the matter is that this latest version will incorporate my drawings directly into the design. Something that I’ve never done. I was hoping to get it done for the one year anniversary, but alas that wasn’t possible. Hopefully I’ll get it done in the coming month or so.
Due to my involvement with WordPress I’ve by mistake become more adept at coding and designing. Standards actually mean something to me, and the latest web technologies actually interest me. See that wasn’t actually the real reason why I started blogging in the first place. All I wanted was an easy way to update my porfolio site. I got a hell of a lot more than I bargained for.
I guess what’s great about the WordPress architecture is the fact that it’s based on software that is open source itself. PHP, MySQL, XML, RSS, CSS etc. So when you decide to learn it, you’re effectively broadening your scope of internet languages that can be used and applied in any other application you decide to implement.
Without a doubt the most important thing I did was the release of Manji back in December. It seems like such a long time ago and my skill has improved greatly since it’s release that I am itching to get back into designing another theme a soon as I get my other projects done and covered.
Rin exceeded anything I could imagine. Coming 2nd in the theme competition (considering the truely awesome work it was up against) was a complete and major honour. The work done on this theme was an additional weeks worth. The deadline helped the theme come out in more ways than one. There are a couple of things that need to be cleaned up and a few more features that I’d like to add, and of course bring out a few more flavours, but again time is not on my side.
I think that’s what I actually take from this blogging experience the most. I’ve been able to express my thoughts on a regular basis, while at the same time met a great bunch of people. I could try and name them all but then I’d miss someone and I’d feel really bad.
378 posts and counting. It’s been a fantastic year for me, and I’m hoping the coming year can live up to the previous one.
Cheers for reading and contributing to Broken Kode.
Got back a few hours ago, and I’ve got to say that blogging everyday is something I’ve seriously missed. I’ve basically got to play ketchup now which isn’t really how this whole blogging thing should work, however one thing that’s become very clear to me in my stay in Lebanon, is that I can’t blog anywhere, comfortably except in the comfort of my own home and computer.
It’s true. I don’t know why, but at work it’s nigh on impossible to type in anything appart from maybe a snippet or two, but a full blown post is not something I can actually get done. Writing in an internet Cafe, with like the slowest connection on earth, on a shitty 800x600 resolution, is just plain painful, and I’ve been looking at my screen nearly weeping with joy at how much real estate I’ve got going here.
The good thing is I took several notes in my moleskin book while I was there, so I’ve got footnotes about the sort of thing I want to talk about. In the next couple of days I’ll hopefully cover all sorts of topics; the good the bad and the ugly of my trip down (my first in 2 years), about my flights (no they weren’t eventful, but there was a few things that I did notice that I think should be mentioned). I’ve got a couple of book reviews I want to get down with, as I ramp up to what is bound to be one of the busiest months of the year for me, since April.
Let’s begin…
Blender 2.37 has been released. It’s been 5 long months since the last release. Got to get my ass in gear and start working with that program.
Intro: While in the Aeroport in London, waiting to go off to Lebanon, I checked out the various stores around. I know Terminal 4 like the back of my hand, as I’ve been in that aeroport countless times on my flights to and from Greece. Straight to Books, etc to see if there’s anything I might have missed out on. The selection isn’t all that great but it passes the time I guess.
The book that caught my eye was Emmanuel Todd’s ‘After the Empire’. It’s originally a french book, that has been recently translated in English. For my month this is currently the book of the year for me. I got on the plane and by the time the plane had landed I’d read half of it. It took me another day to finish off the rest of the book. Seriously it was the addictive.
The meat of the subject: So you ask what is ‘After the Empire’ all about? Before I get into that I’ll explain that Emmanuel successfully predicted the fall of the Sovient Union back in 1974. He’s an incredibly astute writer, something I find very lacking in ‘Political writers’. After the Empire talks about the inevitable fall of the ‘American Empire’. This isn’t a HATE-America book. Far from it. This is a book about facts and what we can understand, deduce from those facts.
The book learns from history and previous world powers. He analyses data in a way I’ve never seen before, and provides tables that are truly telling of how the world works. A complete shocker for me was that only 30% of America’s oil consumption comes from the Middle East. Would you believe Canada, Venezuela, Mexico are three major players in the oil consumption of the US? Here’s the actual information
At his core however Todd is a demographer. He looks at populations and how they’re shifting and changing. He looks at what the implications of a higher infant mortality rate actually means (something he did successfully with the Soviet Union). Does he provide conclusive evidence? Well no, he can’t predict the future. What he does do is analyse the current state of affairs and pays close attention to the last 15 years and explains his thoughts on the matter.
No topic is taboo. He’ll tackle everything from the US government’s Kamikazee foreign policy to the impressive trade deficit. I’ve got to admit that a lot of it went over my head on first reading, because I’m not used to reading about economics, trade deficits, etc. However the information is very well laid out.
Final Verdict. If there’s one book that you’re going to read this year, seriously get ‘After the Empire’ (hey what can I say I saw Episode III, so I’m in a Star Wars mood).
I’ve got a slew of posts I’ll be firing off in the next couple of days, as I get a whole bunch of stuff I’ve written while in Lebanon. I’ve got to admit that I really miss blogging. I miss it because all these ideas and thoughts that keep floating in and out of my head every day, have no place to go; usually they’d go into a post.
Just some house keeping information. Here’s a Map of Lebanon for all those wanting to know just how small the country actually is. I was born and currently in Sidon.
I am going to try and get down as much as possible down because this trip down here has been very important for me. It’s basically opened my eyes to things that I seriously didn’t want to see.
I went up into the mountains on Sunday, to a place called Jezzine (check the map for details). During the war that was completely off bounds, with land mines taking up the entire mountain side. Lebanon by it’s geography is an incredibly mountainous region. That is where the name Lebanon comes from. It’s mountains are always covered in snow, and white in ancient arabic was ‘Laban’ and thus came the world ‘lubaan’ which is what Lebanon is called in Arabic.
Anyway, 30 minutes by car, in what is the worst roads in the world, 15km away and you’re in mountains, with valley’s and trees and a waterfall. Natural serenity and beauty sprawling in front you. I went up with my aunt and uncle Mouine (more on him in future posts). We went to this restaurant and seriously had a stuffing session. So as I’m eating these incredible delights, I reach out for the bottle of water to pour myself a glass. I swear I had a mini-fight with the waiter that refused to let me pour it myself.
That one moment kind of summed up my stay here in Lebanon, and in general the Lebanese people. Excess. The Lebanese people love excess. Things that serious go above and beyond the norm or reason, just because. Stuff like valet parking, to the constant food offerings to guests. I’d probably guess that at least 60% of the cars here are either mercs or BMWs. Don’t get me wrong nothing wrong with BMWs (loads wrong with mercs but that’s another post for another time), it’s just that whether people can afford it or not, they’ll buy them, just to show off.
Lebanon, the country of excess.
Can’t believe it’s already been a week in Lebanon. I swear not having the internet in the house for my to blog about all these things on a daily basis. I think I’m going to have to invest in some moblogging (that’s equipment when I get back to England.
This has been on my mind fo a while now, but it’s not until I got to Lebanon, that I can really see the use for it. I swear I could, and probably will, write volumes about my current visit.
Just a few bullet points that hopefully I’ll remember to elaborate on in the future:
Also I’ve got a couple of e-mails from people, trust me I’ll get back to everyone like I always do, once I get back. Let’s hope we get a repeat of the Monaco Grand Prix this week, and see Williams on the podium again. Gooooo NiNick Heidfeld.
This year I didn’t actually have any clear travelling plans. Usually these things fall into my lap, or it’s a standard trip to Greece. This year however I’m not in the mood to go to Athens again. Sure the parents are there but I need a bit of change. Having said, with the upcoming elections in Lebanon and several other bits an pieces I’m packing my bags tomorrow and I’m off to Lebanon.
I’ve not been down to Lebanon in close to 2 years, and so all my aunts and uncles, cousins, second cousins etc etc have all grown up. Some have moved on, and the country has changed for sure. Unfortunately internet access will be sparse so I doubt I’ll be online much. I might update once or twice in my stay but it’s not going to be a regular thing. I’m back on the 5th of June which effectively means that I’ll be posting all sorts of things when I get back.
I’ve been pretty down on the whole design front as I’ve had a bit of a lull and really needed a break from it all. I think this break will provide me just that. Time to energise the batteries, restock on ideas and get that flare for design and illustration all over again.
Just as an update to all the projects I’m involved with right now so that people can have a better grasp of it all: Shuttle We’re actually started discussing how this is going to be built between a 7 man team. That’s Joshua, Matt, Chris, Joen, Michael, myself and the ever excellent Ryan. It’s not been as fast and furious development as it was in the begining but that’s mainly got to do with the fact that it’s no longer just a small beautification of the WordPress administration panel, but a whole lot more. It’s an elevation of what is already well put together into something that will set the standard.
WordPress Portal Ah you thought that was all just talk. Hardly. After that post I got a nice e-mail from Mark from weblogtoolscollection.com asking if I’d like to redesign that site, and that it would house all the ideas etc that we talked about. I explained that this was something I wanted to be a community driven thing, so I wanted it to eventually move over to the WordPress main site; so off we took this idea to Matt who said that parts of it might get incorporated but it’s all a bit of wait and see. However he did say that we could have a sub-domain of wordpress.net and he’s put up the bandwidth for us, which is pretty damn awesome I think. So where do we go from here? Well not sure. I’ve set up a mailing list that I’m trying to get to grips with, should get start detailing it in the near future, and then the fun starts I guess.
Once I get back I’ll start the first mock up and paste it for everyone to have a play with. People can then play around with it and pass it around. That way we’ll all have some say in it’s design.
Once that’s done we’ll jump into the coding aspects.
Once that’s done, then we’ll make a decision as to where/what it should be hosted/named.
Broken Kode Update 1 year of Broken Kode is coming close (I’ve been blogging for about a year and a half, but only bought the domain a little less than a year ago) and I’m planning on a few things for this special event for me. 3 of these things involve a few additions to the shop ( 2 of which will be sent to all those that bought the print as a thank you for their stuppendous support). Broken Kode version 4 is getting prepped, and it’s going to be unlike most blogs you see out there; trust me it’s unlike anything I’ve ever done, and I can’t wait to get cracking on it (I’ve got germs of ideas floating in my head and a few loose mock ups but nothing concrete, and yet I’m very excited.)
Sublime Never ending story. Well I’m going to be working on this I think. I didn’t get a print out of where I’m at which is a bit annoying, so hopefully I’ll find a printer down there, but I’ll be sure to get into it and start writing like I’ve not done in a while.
Drawing and Painting This is what I’m hoping to get back into. Actually draw and paint something every day. It’s going to be tough for sure, but I want to get that buzzing feeling I get once I’ve finished a painting. I generally use water colours, so hopefully I’ll doing this more and more. I know it’s only 2 weeks, but it doesn’t take much to spark a start really.
Hopefully the spammers will be nice and not try and fuck me over. They’ve been good this past month or so I’m hoping this keeps up.
God how I fucking hate these things. I mean seriously, it’s the sort of thing that they put into place just to PISS people off. The worst is the ones that sit there and talk to you and ask you for your name. Once that’s done, they’ll repeat your name to you. Isn’t that nice? Erm no that’s not my name you bastard. By the fourth time I swear I was shouting “NO YOU BASTARD THAT’S NOT MY NAME” down my phone.
While we’re on the subject of really annoying telephone protocol, what the hell is that rubbish with Indian call centres? We’ve been getting this more and more over here, nearly every day I get a phone call from somewhere in India asking me about my telephone bill and, now I just hang up. Straight away. Depending on my mood I’ll tell them to fuck off. Is it their fault? No hardly, they’re just doing their job, but I refuse to get hassled every single day, after I tried to get my name off their bloody database, which obviously the guy didn’t bother doing, so hopefully they’ll take me off because I’m so rude.
Hell Sylvane made fun of me once because I was trying to reason with them to get me off the list. No more.
EU Lance European Professionals for European Business, interesting site that I’ll be signing up for.
My god for a second there I thought I’d actually forgotten what it was like to be truely inspired. I draw a lot of inspiration from graphic novels and graphic design in general. The thing is though it’s been a while since I’ve been truely inspired to do some kick ass work in the past week and a bit. I will admit that a lot of it has to do with my current slump I’m in (which is why the updates haven’t been fast and furious as they usually are around these parts).
So I’ve been reading and trying to gain inspiration. It’s not soo much that I don’t have the ideas, or the projects to sick my teeth into, it’s just that right now I’m lacking that drive that motivates me to go for it with absolutely everything I’ve got.
Yesterday I sat down and read Mark Millar and J.G Jones' Wanted. Now usually I’ll buy a book based on the writer. Seldom do I go for the artist alone. This was not the case say 6 years ago when the artist was everything. The thing is though, that while the writer makes me think, COOL, that was great. It’s the artist that will make my jaw drop, and my imagination race for a while, and there’s this silence in my head, as everything begins to become clear and I know what I was missing all this time.
It’s the spark that’s been missing, and thanks to Jeff Johnson and a pin up he did for Wanted I’m inspired and I can start doing things again. I’ll be updating everyone about the portal we spoke about a while back, as there have been some interesting development in that area. Just need to get my thoughts in place before we get that going.
Sebastian passed me a musical baton, would it have been too hard to pass me a pizza? I mean what am I supposed to do with a baton..oh wait I get it. Okay then here’s my musical baton/pizza:
Total volume of music files on my computer: 5 Gb (too many CDs, can’t be bothered to put them onto my computer yet).
The last CD I bought was: “The Antidote” by Morcheeba.
Song playing right now: ”Feel Good Inc” by Gorillaz
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:
PS Shawn you bastard! You essentially knocked off two of the people I wanted to send this to (you and Chris Davis).
I’ve been a bit less than productive this last week and a bit. I guess it’s a culmination of a couple of things really. It’s me going at this design, drawing, writing and coding stuff non-stop for a while, and I guess I just needed a break. What’s cool is I’ve been catching up on a lot of reading that I’ve wanted to do for ages now, as the pile next to my bed just seems to be getting bigger and bigger despite me promising myself that I wouldn’t buy anymore books, comics or magazines until I’d finished reading the previous ones.
It’s really strange but I feel like I’m wasting time by not doing anything, and it’s getting a bit hard actually. I love the fact that I’ve got several projects on my plate. I’m pretty devoted to what I want to accomplish and this past week has been slow, it’s strange like the inspiration has been sucked out of me. It’s a mental block that I really want to get rid of completely.
One thing I’ve not achieved yet and this is something I wish I knew how to do, is to strike a balance in terms of time and commitment to all the projects I have. I can’t seem to do that, as if I get stuck into something, that’s it, I have to keep hammering until it’s where I want it to be. I miss the creative buzz I get after I’ve completed a project, I do miss it and yet I sit there and nothing comes out.
This used to happen to me when I used to draw and draw and get stressed out when I wasn’t as great as I wanted to be. Or I could only see the flaws in my work. This is the equivalent of a writer’s block, however I believe that a mental block basically cuts off your creativity, your inspiration, and it does happen. It happens when other things in your life get in the way.
It’s been a while since I actually went into a store and picked up some new music that I could genuinely get excited about. It’s one of those feelings I remember I used to get nearly every single month when I was younger. I know I’m sounding like I’m 85 but it’s true. When I was at University the type of music I was into was exploding all around me. The Smashing Pumpkins were doing their thing, Dave Grohl had just released his Foo Fighter’s project. Rage Against the Machine were making such noise the world over. Play from Moby had just been released. Pearl Jam’s Yield returned them to their early form.
There was a vibrancy in all these albums. I guess I should have a top 100 albums you HAVE to own list, but this is all about the Summer Playlists. I always have a set of albums or music that defines any summer for me. Sometimes it’s actually by design, other times the music falls into my lap and it’s a great feeling. As I rev myself up to my first proper holiday since Athens 2004, I’m starting thinking about the summer playlist that’s going to define 2005.
So the albums that I’m looking forward to or have begun buying:
What’s on your summer playlist?
Yeah like something this big was going to happen and I wasn’t going to comment on it? Haven’t I taught you anything? When I heard that this was going to happen, I swear I thought that is was a bad idea. DC’s bullet is timeless. It’s a classic and it’s something that we all know (at least those of us who give a damn). Think about it, the only other comic book company to have a distinct logo would be Image comics, and even that got a slight overhaul a few years ago.
So I waited for the finished product to be shown before I could pass judgement. If the bullet is going to be replaced, then it has to be replaced by something, bigger, better and brighter. Something that won’t look dated after a while (like 1 year) and something that’s obviously versatile for all the new things that they want to slap it across.
Does this latest iteration actually work for me? Honestly the short answer is no. I like certain elements of it, and I think they’ve done a pretty good job with certain parts (like the oval shape and the single star), but I think they really dropped the ball on the font of choice, as it’s a pretty ugly choice of font in my opinion.
Thing is my opinion counts for shit, as they’ve gone and done it without consulting me, bastards. I will not forget this insolence. One of the things however that I find really annoying is how the assholes on the message boards think they know what’s right. Guys american comics have been known to have some of the worst if not the worst graphic design in publishing history. Oh sure there are some serious gems that break, nay shatter that rule, but as a whole taken as a general point, it’s all pretty weak.
Best graphic designer working in comics today is the great Ryan Hughes and Chip Kidd. Every times I see a book that’s well put together I’m usually not surprised that it was designed or these gentlemen had a hand in the design of the book.
So back to the asswanks on the board, who give their completely uneducated opinions and then rally around someone who posts a crappy rendition. Please, DC aren’t that moronic to just jump for the first thing. I’m sure they had hunderds of iterations before they came up with what they thought was a winner. Oh sure it doesn’t mean they got it right, but I can understand what they’re trying to achieve.
Points that could improve the current new design would be the typography and choice of font could have been better in my opinion, and maybe the gradients could have been done without, since those will look dated in 4 years time.
Here are few good links if you want some insight into the creation of this logo:
<li><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33582">Richard Bruning on the design of the new logo</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/DC/Countdown_more/DCLogonewLevitz.htm">Paul Levitz on the logo</a></li>
Designtimes , South African design Mag. I love the neat flash at the top. (via pixelsurgeon)
No I didn’t but it would be nice to experience that. However I’ve been reading Inoue Takehiko’s SLAM DUNK. This was a manga done in what it would seem the early to mid 90s. The series ran 31 volumes in Japan (each volume having around 180 pages). It was originally published in the US and subsequently shipped to the rest of the Anglophone countries by Raijin Comics sometime in late 2003. The company stopped it’s publishing program about a year ago and with it Slam Dunk stopped being translated, at Volume 5. Needless to say by that stage I was COMPLETELY hooked on this series, which is one of the best selling manga’s in Japan.
With no translation around I just gave up on the series, not because of choice but what was I supposed to do, learn Japanese?
Little did I know that the internet and more specifically Bit Torrent would come to my rescue. I never ever download comics. I’m a book nut. I like the smell and feel of a book. I like picking it off the shelf and flicking through to have a look and be inspired. Never got into it, even though there seems to be masses of series available for illegal download on the net.
I was talking to James and he mentioned that the entire series was available in English online if I really wanted to read the series. I’m up to volume 14 and I can’t seem to get enough of this series.
The story centres around Hanamichi who’s been rejected 50 times, and then meets this girl who’s into basketball, in order to impress her he decides to join the bastketball team. Thing is though, he HATES basketball. And so it begins.
It’s easily one of the most addictive series I’ve ever read. The thing that really comes across fantastically is the humour which is absolutely brilliant. It’s been a while since I laughed out loud on my own reading something. The art is superb, but there is a bit of rawness in the work that Inoue’s later offering (the great Vagabond, which I’ll hopefully get round to reviewing properly in the near future). Having said that it’s still tighter than most manga on the stand, and he’s easily becoming one of my absolute favourite Japanese creators, and that’s saying a lot.
What makes me wonder however is which country translated the series and published it in english, and if so can I buy it online or not? That’s how much of a fan and idiot I am of this series. Also I’d really love to sit down and watch the anime series of this, except I don’t think it’s available in english. Again I could be wrong in this subject.
Haven’t written one of these in a while, but I guess one program I use every day practically and I’m sure other people use a similar program in one form or another is the excellent Xnview.
The website says it’s got the following features:
Advantages: What I love about it is that it’s light weight. I want a screen shot of something? Bang it’s done, resized, cropped and saved ready to go within minutes.
It’s my weapon of choice when I’m putting something on Broken Kode. I could do it in Photoshop, but this method is so much faster.
The thing I like the most about this program is the fact that it is solidly made. From the icon to the menu system, everything is laid out in a proper order and is very easy to understand.
It also integrates nicely with itself. So that you’ve got the thumbnail view and an explorer like menu, which when a thumb is clicked it takes you to the image. Close the image and you’re back in the explorer menu. This is in contrast to Ifranview for example which is seperated into two programs.
The icons are extension specific. So a png with have a little png note on it, while a gif will be a different colour, that sort of thing. There is a commercial version of the program
It’s nice that it’s skinnable, scores some major points with me as the default is a bit boring.
Disadvantages: It will view my psd files, although for some reason if they’re CMYK it’s completely kill the colours, but that’s a small price to pay to be honest.
When viewing AutoCAD files however It comes up with a stupid popup message that asks me if I want to buy a plugin. No f"£k off.
Although to be honest I’d have liked it more if it would actually have been open source like firefox. It could easily be one of the best tools on the market for this sort of thing. I’d really like to see an open source alternative that rivals how well built this little application is however I haven’t found one, so I’ll be content with this freeware software.
Go get WordPress 1.5.1. I’ve upgraded to the latest version, 170 bugs squashed. Good number.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but I really think that Free Comic Book Day is a complete crock of shit for anywhere outside of America. For those in the dark, Free Comic Book Day was inspired by Baskin Robbins Free Scoop day or some such bollocks, where you go in and get some free ice cream. The idea was ported over to the funny books and basically you go into a comic book store and get a free comic book or two.
Sounds like a good plan right? Wrong. It only works in America where the shipping costs of these books is not an issue. Otherwise the retailer picks up the tab over here, and it’s a complete NON event. I’ve tried to get into the spirit of the day, taken friends to the comic book store, tried to get them into the day, but it all was for nothing. One store was selling the ‘free’ comics, and several others we just not interested in the whole event.
Good idea, but I didn’t make anything of it and I won’t be bothering with it ever again. In addition to that the comics that they’ve chosen to give away are rubbish. I’m not trying to be harsh here, but none of these books would make me want to come in next week and buy the next installment or whatever, (that’s if I wasn’t hooked on the medium of course, hypothetically speaking). Here’s a list of the Gold Sponsors. With the exception of Flight, it’s a whole lot of nothing interesting. Flight on the other hand is a primer, so it’ll have a few pages of this or that, not really a solid story.
it’s good to see that the initiative keeps coming ever year, as this is effectively the 4th time it’s held but it’s not something I can use. What I can use, and I’m pretty happy that Vertigo has done, is that £5 book of #1s. They compiled some of the best #1 from their fantastic line of books and put them under one cover as a way to get people to try something different. I’ve got all the issues in one form or another in this book, however it’s great to give it out to people.
I’ve started compiling information and ideas for what I want to do with Broken Kode. The site is a constant evolution. Everytime I get into one of these I end up knowning that much more about WordPress, PHP, CSS and other web technologies. I also end up knowing and probably contacting various plugin authors around the world asking them why their beautiful plugin does this or the other. It’s how I learn, and I guess that’s why I like to dive into the design and coding of websites. Since this is my playground this is what gets hit first.
Originally I didn’t want to touch the design of the site for at least a year. However the actual site mandate outgrew the design and that was something honestly I didn’t actually think of. So what’s the deal now you ask? Well there are many new ideas I’d like to implement and the whole site shouldn’t take me more than a week to deal with coding-wise (friggin IE will probably take up more time fixing, but I’m more prepared now than I was a version ago so that’s reassuring).
However that’s not what this post is about. In doing my research I decided to see what new functionality I could actually provide to users and to the site in general. Where to start?
Well we’ve got the excellent BlogginPro and WeblogToolsCollection doing a bang up job day in, day put, providing us with the latest information about themes, plugins etc. Scripty Goddess has been very quiet of late, but I’m sure she’ll get back into it sooner or later. How about going to the Wp-plugin repository. Ok, so it’s not the easiest of things to download plugins from. Every file is seperate, and only in some cases do all files come as one whole zip file. What a shag, 15 plugins later and their respective readme files downloaded seperately, placed in their own folders for archiving, and I started thinking to myself… there’s something seriously lacking in the WordPress community.
That something is a well structured, fully searchable, design , coding and interview PORTAL. What I’m talking about is an actual graphical website that provides the latest WordPress information in such a way that makes it appealing. Tutorials and interviews could be active features of the site. The reason behind this is pretty apparent. You have one place to go to for information, articles, tutorials etc.
I would happily contribute the design of the website, and write an article a week for it. I’m sure I could persuade people (under penalty of death ^_^) to contribute stuff to the site as well. Hell we could have a rolling RSS counter on the side that links directly to BlogginPro and WeblogToolsCollection as well.
Ideally speaking that is what the official WordPress website should be all about, alas it’s not my baby and I’m not the one fronting up the cash and time to run it and maintain it so Matt is obviously free to do as he pleases with the site. Just got me thinking is all.
I know people like James, Podz and others would be pretty good for this sort of thing. They’d really enjoy it I think, better sense of community. I dunno, maybe I’m just rambling here.
Structurally I guess it would be something akin to PixelSurgeon or Wired, although I would want more images involved, make it less boring.
It would seem I’ve finished work on Rin and Manji wouldn’t it? It would seem that way, but that would be a lie. I’ve been compiling information and ideas from people on the Broken Kode Boards, on the WordPress Boards, e-mails people have sent and even reviews people have written. There is a lot of little things that I should have the time to finish in the coming week. Here’s a list of them, I’ll come back to this post and strike them through once I’ve completed them.
<ol>
That’s all I can think of for now. If I do come up with any more ideas, or if anyone has any other points they think I’ve missed out on here, then just post it underneath, if it’s doable then I’ll update.
For those who want a 3 Column Rin RIGHT NOW, then I direct you to Hemisphere Dance’s website and download Rin Tin Tin.
Also before I forget Rin has been localised for into both Persian and German (thanks to Ali and Oli respectively). Go to the Rin download page for more information.
Backpack PIM. I was searching for something like this. Still I would have liked to have this installed on my system, like Tasks.
One thing that my little experience with Emmortel has proven to me is that if I’ve got a deadline I will do everything that I have to to meet that deadline. I will not cut too many corners, just be professional enough to achive a specific level that is acceptable to me. I’m a complete anal perfectionist and so NOTHING is ever good enough. Nothing achives it’s potential. Everything can be done better.
However in order to get anywhere you have to try, try and try again; and you must have a deadline. A self imposed deadline, a set deadline, whatever. Something that makes you work harder and longer, and faster and with more passion and conviction than if it was left to the wind to see when it gets done it gets done.
With Emmortel “complete” I can turn my eyes onto a few projects that have been abandonded these past couple of weeks/month. So that it can be official (when I mean official, actually documented somewhere and that would be right here because I can run away from this post but it will always be there staring at me, haunting me) I think I’m going to give myself 20 days to finish off the first draft of my script ‘Sublime’. Twenty days because I fly to Lebanon on the 21st of May.
I’ve thought about this story for close to a year solid now. I’ve written countless (actually more like 6) drafts of the plot, I’m 30 pages into the current script, let the fun begin.
Gather round children while I explain why I’ve got an online presence at all.
Draw! My first and biggest passion is drawing. That’s what I did for the better part of my adolescent life. I would spend hours upon hours sketching away, trying to perfect that one drawing. Summers on end where I would wake up and spend 10-15 hours over my desk sketching and painting and learning a new technique.
I haven’t done that in a very long time. Day in day out, Draw! Draw! Draw! I can attribute that to one and only reason, the web. I’ve already spoken about how I got into learning how to design, but why did I bother with the computer at all in the first place? The main and only reason at the time was I wanted to computer colour my work. It seemed like the right thing to do I guess.
Inbetween all of this the web however had a strange allure on me. ‘Let’s get a website, everyone seems to have one, why not me? You’ve got a reason to be online, it’ll be great.’
Part of me wants to go back to that poor bastard and tell him to stop these stupid ideas and get back down to the business of drawing, because I was soo naive at how hard it can actually be. Of course if I did that, well then life at work wouldn’t be quite as interesting, and I wouldn’t be able to do a great deal of things that I can to enhance my drawings, plus I wouldn’t have 3 different drawings styles that I do now. It all kind of works out in the end I guess, just takes that much longer with, story of my life actually. I always get there, it just takes me 3 times as long, and sometimes the train has passed.
Therefore that effort has not been lost, it’s hidden there, it’s just a matter of sitting down and getting drawing again. Emmortel provides me with the framework set up for quick and easy updates, I’m ready to tackle the first reason I decided to get online. The origins of Broken Kode can be mapped back to providing an easy way to update my portfolio site with news updates. It’s spiralled into oh so much more, and I didn’t expect that, but I’m really glad for it.
Is this the first time I’ve got a portfolio online? No hardly, but it is the first time where updating the site, won’t be an issue. It won’t be a chore, just a 3 minute job, with no coding involved at all. It’s a base for me to start.
Design. In creating Emmortel I had to think about several things. The main issue was whether or not to go for Flash versus something HTML/CSS pure. I ended up with a hybrid as they both have their advantages and disadvantages. With Flash you’ve got control over images, functions, sound (coming soon I hope), movement, etc. It’s a great little tool, if used wisely. Strangely it’s the Flash part of the site that I’m least happy with, but I’m in no rush. I’ll be tweaking that file for sure, adding better interactivity and functionality. I just need to learn how.
In sorting out my Flash side of things, I ran into MANY problems. My knight in shining armour was Scotty, (his website can be found here: Gertdesign ). Scotty you sir ROCK!
I have optimised the images as much as they will go, and the css file runs at a whopping 3k which I’m pretty happy with, so hopefully it’s not an arduous task to load the site.
1024 versus 800 I’ve chosen my path on this particular war. This portfolio website is meant to be a showcase of art and design, it’s not meant to be seen at such as small screen, and honestly I’m not targeting people who are still with an 800 screen. The majority (and by majority I’m talking about 80%) will be able to view the website as it was intended to. I apologise to those still on 800 screens, but alas I believe it’s time to chuck out that dusty old monitor (do they still make 800x600s?)
So now when I get my business cards made, I’ll have:
Batman Begins full trailer. I can’t wait for this movie. It’s going to be 1986 all over again.
When I originally signed up for the May 1st Reboot, I actually didn’t expect to hit the date at all. The main reason was that I had something specific in my head, and I’d been out of the Flash loop for around a year, so I’d missed the boat on several clean advancements, and an overall spike in open source fla files floating around the internet to be modified and used.
Alas the more I looked at online portfolios the more I started to realise something. The only portfolios I’d actually stick around and have a look at were those that didn’t waste my time. Unless they were exceptionally fantastic in functionality, I generally have a couple of clicks and I’m outta there. So in designing Emmortel I actually decided to bring the content front and centre.
Is the actual site anything like what I had in mind? No, I’m not good enough for my ideas yet. It’s like that with any creative media. You must know your limitations. What you should however do is to always strive to MEET that vision; of course by that stage your ideas have grown even more, but at least there’s a constant state of evolution.
The problem is I’ve been so heavily into the actual web development side of things, my illustrations have been sparser in numbers lately. That is going to change from now on, with only one redesign looming on the horizon; that being for Broken Kode’s One Year Anniversary. Version 3 was an eye opener. It helped me understand how to make a theme do EXACTLY what you want it to. I thoroughly enjoyed the CSS design process of Emmortel and will constantly tweak for sure, but it’s the first step that’s always the hardest. Going from nothing to something you can build upon and expand all begins with that all important first step.
Then of course there’s the whole debate of CSS Reboot versus May 1st Reboot. One being traditionally aimed towards Flash (May 1st Reboot), the other being well for CSS. The funny thing is that Emmortel currently will be using the following languages, PHP, CSS, XHTML, XML and Flash.
There’s a good post over at Keith Robinson’s website about the stylistic differences between the two initiatives. I don’t agree with everything he’s written there.
He doesn’t like the rollover effects in the May 1st Reboot site, because they’re unneccesary. I think those little things add an element of fun to the whole design. Not everything has to be there for a reason. As designers you put something because it’s fun looks good or whatever, binds the page together, thus enhancing your experience.
I’m excited to release it as I’ve been siting on the design for a month now, and I’ve got itchy fingers to just press and have it running (it’s got a WordPress backend, so it’ll go live with the simple change of a theme :) ).
I will voice my one pet peeve that not everyone is actually adhering to the goddamn guidelines. I went through like 20 random links on that website to see if everyone had the image holder, alas of the 20 I got 1 person, ah whatever, time to get drawing again.
Serenity Trailer is out and about. Can’t wait for this. (link via Matt)
See now this is a pretty interesting little project that I’m surprised the usual culprits on the web haven’t really talked about. Mike Davidson has just released sIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses. It’s a smart little method to actually enhance your typography without killing accessibility.
A flash file is created, but not after it’s jumped through a couple of hoops to make sure that the end user actually has the proper software to see the fantastic new and exciting typography.
What I’m most impressed about is just tight the entire package is. I love it when I download something and there’s a handy manual in it. The code might be the most spectacular in the world, however because I can’t make heads or tails of it, it’s pretty useless to me.
I’ve been having soo much fun with designing Emmortel lately, that I’ve got this mini creative boost, and I’m itching for the next project I take on because I’d also really like to implement this method and a couple of others that I’ve been learning.
Star Wars: Revelations. Just downloading this MAMMOTH project right now. I’ll post a much more indepth review once I’ve properly digested everything.
Since the editors of the book Alison and Dave have updated the official site with a mock up of the concept behind Human? I guess it’s okay to talk about it. A while back I wrote a review of Freewave, which ended with a brief e-mail conversation with the guys and hey presto I’ll be providing an image for the follow up to Freewave, entitled Human?
As you can imagine I’m pretty psyched about this in the biggest possible way. This in a way really prompted me to sort out my portfolio website, since I had to send a pdf with some samples of my work in them. I’ve got several ideas bandiying in my head with respect to what I want my contribution in the book to look like, knowing me I’ll probably have 3 or 4 ideas before I send the final one in.
The geek in me however is really excited to be in the same book as Brian Taylor. I love Rustboy to bits.
Went and got myself some running shoes Saturday. Bearing in mind that I think I’ve only every bought running shoes once in my life, and that was back when I was 12 years old or something stupid like that (i.e before I discovered basketball), and I was amazed by the different styles and ‘technologies’ available. I tried one of each, Adidas’s Cell technology, Nike’s pillar spring thingy, don’t know how else to describe them, the tried and tested air max stuff and some Puma (they were pretty crap so I don’t even remember what they actually looked like, just that I tried on a pair).
Luckily I got talking to a guy at work on Friday who told me what to look out for in terms of running shoes. Apparently go for things that are light; the lighter they are the more designed for running they are. Lots of stylised rubbish going on with these types of shoes so I guess he had a good point there.
Get one size larger, so as to avoid blisters on your toes. Hmm another goldie I guess, wouldn’t have thought of that, although it does make sense. Just make sure it’s only half a number if you’re UK or US size, and go for a full number if you have European thought patterns (like me).
What amazed me is just how much difference there actually is between the spring and the air option. Dunno why anyone would go for the spring option, because I tested them both and I tell you what, the one that absorbed the most shock from my heel was the air. No comparison. I’m not sure if there’s something I’m missing out on here but anyway.
I never thought I’d be excited about the next time I go running. When I was at school we had to do cross-country training as well. It was DEATH. The reason I guess it was tough is because that type of running is something you get the hang of after a while. Even if you’re relatively fit, from playing ball sports, it’s a different kind of muscle and health that’s involved. The good news is that you pick it up pretty damn quickly. It’s only taken me a week of this.
And like the Morgan from SuperSize me said, ‘once you get over the three day hump, it’s pretty easy to continue after that.’
I’ve been soo busy sorting out Emmortel out for the launch next week that I’ve had no time to write about anything these past couple of days. It’s really strange but what got me pumped up to finish it on time, isn’t the promise I made myself ages ago, but rather a poem that Stathi wrote for me in mind. One of the reasons we’re such good buddies (and there are many) is the fact that we both feel slightly displaced in our country of origin. We understand what it means to be raised in one place but belong somewhere else. The last few lines really struck a cord with me, so I’ll eventually use those in the animation I’m working on. Just as a small footnote, khaled in arabic means immortality.
My people in the middle but to the east Who have lived in my veins since birth Will now all have white hair
I leave home, sworn to enter my palace of dreams The friends, the hugs, the kisses, my prints, my book and all my wishes are memories, that will flash by With every step amitiously taken searching for the palace door …to be awaken…
The years go by The ink falls Computer burn And the tables turn Everything will be like first Everything will be lost With a purpose to be discovered The world that is round Is a wheel of life that never stops
Like the King of the wind Who never inhales I will never stop Emmortel.
Pamela Anderson blogging? WTF. Damn that’s pretty crazy, although I keep remembering the Quentin Tarantino Blog a while back, which was actually pretty funny.
Yesterday I spent the better part of 3 hours scrounging the internet for decent Flash tutorials regarding how to make a dynamic Flash gallery. I stay away from Flash for 1 year and the amount of development on this application is simply astounding. I mean anyone who’s played around with Flash knows what an incredibly powerful and versatile program it is. The functionality provided through Actionscripting 2 is even more amazing.
One of my basic joys in design is when I start the mock up. I swear I can probably pump these out 1 a day, which is why Broken Kode changes design as often as it has in it’s 10 months in existance (3 in case you’re wondering). Many people fear the white canvas, the blank screen; I on the other hand relish it. I looked at my watch and it’s was about 12 days before the end of the month.
Emmortel wasn’t even close to being finished. I spent all of Sunday evening on the design, but as I was doing this, the same question kept on coming back, ‘How the hell are you going to do that? You don’t have the time’ And it’s true, I don’t have the time for the original vision of Emmortel. That’s ok though. I know my limitations at this point. I don’t think my portfolio website will reach my original vision now till at least version 3 or 4.
In the same way I don’t think Broken Kode will achieve my vision till at least version 5 or 6. I’m still learning, I’m still developing my style, and the day I’m actually happy and completely content with every aspect of any of my work is the day I pack everything and stop. I’m my own worst critic and as such I only see imperfections in my designs and work, but I guess that’s what makes the new work better than the previous.
While I was in Wales, we went into Fopp, which is without a doubt one of my favourite stores in the UK. The stuff they sell in there is aimed squarely on my kind of demographic, and at prices generally speaking I can’t resist. So it’s generally a struggle NOT to buy something every single time I go in there. Rarely am I ever disappointed with what I come out with. Case in point, I bought Yann Martel’s first book, or to be more precise a collection of 4 short stories he wrote back when he was my age. The main story (clocking in at 100 pages) and taking the title of the book is ‘The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios’. I was sceptical at first since I absolutely ADORE Life of Pi, and hold it as one of my absolute favourite books ever, and that’s saying a lot. So going into this book, I was a bit apprehensive. Would Yann’s earlier work even come close to how powerful and polished his current stuff is? I didn’t have to fear a thing. The story is set in the 80s at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Lots of facts weren’t known about the disease. There was a glimmer of hope back then that the cure was around the corner. 20 plus years later, I can’t see us any closer to the cure. The story centres around the narrator of the story and his buddy Paul. They met in their early 20s, unfortunately Paul is diagnosed with AIDS. Yann draws upon personal experiences in all/most of his works as far as I can tell, he mentions it in his forward as well. Step by step we meet the family and the circumstances that led to Paul getting AIDS; however the meat and potatoes of the story centres around the bond these two friends develop at the worst possible time. To keep from idle times the narrator (it’s told from his perspective, so we never seem to get his name), comes up with a plan. They’re going to tell the story of a family, based on the events of the 20th Century. They take it in turns, one takes the even years, the other takes the odd years. From the type of stories each choose to focus on, you get to see what’s on their mind, and how they’ve chosen to express themselves. It’s a fantastically simple and yet powerful idea. You’ll slice through this story in 1 sitting probably, it’s that gripping. It does seem rough around the edges, but what’s extremely clear is that Yann had a voice, that transcended age and was destined to write great stories.
Adobe has bought Macromedia. First let me start by saying that I didn’t even know that Macromedia was for sale. The official statements can be read from the Macromedia website or the Adobe website.
Just went over to Pixelsurgeon, and BAM there was the news. My initial reaction to this current turn of events is skeptical but not hopeful. I actively use both Macromedia and Adobe products. I can’t do without photoshop, and likewise, Flash is an incredible program to use.
Once you take these two applications out of the way, things start to get really fuzzy between the two software companies. The aforementioned Flash and Photoshop aren’t going anywhere (I’ll add Director into that list even though I don’t actually use it), they both provide a particular niche in the market that completely dominates. The fact that Adobe now owns both programs is a MAJOR coupe. I’m more worried about what lies beneath.
Freehand vs Illustrator The first tussle as far as I can see is the one between the vector drawing applications the new company has at it’s disposal. Both are in direct competition with each other. I’m a Freehand user through and through. It’s more lightweight than illustrator, I like the interface, if I need to make a quick draft and can’t be bothered to use Indesign, Freehand does pages for me. It was the first of the vector programs to provide 3D capabilities. Trace has been a feature for a while, as has the excellent hose tool, and the list goes on. I personally never warmed up to Illustractor. Nothing against the program which I know is very capable, but it’s just a preferance thing isn’t it. That being said something that brings both applications together would be great, although I fear one of the main reasons I actually learnt how to make Freehand sing for me was the fact it was lightweight. This is not something that Adobe seem to really care much about.
SWF vs SVG It’s completely freaky that this morning I was looking into learning more about the SVG format, as I like open source software as is apparent, and knew there was an alternative to Flash. This was something I’ve been pretty curious about, and since I’ve been working on Emmortel I’ve wanted to see what my options are. Why would you actively try and give a boost to the direct competition to swf when you own the bloody format. It made good business sense before to try and fight Macromedia and provide alternatives, but without any editors that are even half capable (I’m not talking for vector drawing I’m more interested in the animation side of things), this format will take years to bear fruit, if it ever does.
And then there’s Microsoft’s Flash alternative, which I can’t be bothered thinking about right now, Sparkle.
Dreamweaver vs GoLive Honestly I can’t even see this as a competition. Dreamweaver is about 2 million times more accomplished than GoLive. Having said that, it’s one of MM’s heavier programs, which is to be expected with the amount of functionality it has at it’s disposal. The more I get into programming side of things the more I actually shy away from using DW. I’ve been using Notepad++ for most of my programming of late, with a little help from DW whenever I wanted to test something locally. GoLive should go away.
Fireworks vs ImageReady Hmm as I only use IR when exporting jpgs to the web, and never got into Fireworks, I don’t really care much about this little battle.
The main thing I guess that will change eventually is the interface. Both companies have worked on this extensively. I guess they could have two views as with the current Macromedia stuff with two versions of view rather than one.
This whole situation kind of reminds me of the Sega/Nintendo battle of the early 90s. Anyone who was a Sega person as well out there knows what I’m talking about. I’m not thrilled about this situation as I’m sure most people at Macromedia are probably scratching their heads going, weren’t we meant to be their biggest competitors? Hell that’s what I thought as well. Apparently not that big. This is not a good thing for the industry as it eliminates that healthy competitive environment. There was a constant one-up-manship involved here and that will soon disappear the way of the dodo. Adobe’s Flash, damn I got the same feeling when I saw Sonic the Hedghog on Nintendo’s Game Cube.
Rin and Manji are two themes created for the WordPress blogging system. Rin is an extension of Manji and between the two of them they have been downloaded over 6000 times from this here site. However I’ve never spoken about why I chose those names. The names were chosen as an homage to the fantastic comic book series by the completely awesome Hiroaki Samura, Blade of the Immortal.
The story is set in feudal Japan, and centres on Asano Rin and her attempt to seek revenge for the murder of her parents. In her quest Yaobikuni (a tiny old lady, who’s a buddist monk) advises her to get a good Yojimbo (bodyguard). Enter Manji.
The story is gut renching, beautiful, inspiring, shocking, grossing-out, harsh, sweet, poetic and brutal. It’s one of the seminal works in sequential storytelling, and I’d recommend it to anyone.
I’ve been meaning to give a proper review of this series for a while, but David Bird seems to have done a much better job of it than I would have.Go read the excellent review.
I’m only going to add that if I was stranded on a desert island and could get one comic book series delivered to me, Blade of the Immortal would be it. I’ve been reading it since issue 8, today I bought issue 100.
So I’ve just been for my first run in over a year. Not that I haven’t done any running since last year, just not this particular type of running. London is very strange in that the early hours of the morning are always bright and sunny and incredibly misleading for how the rest of the day will shape up to be (I’m talking weatherwise here). So I woke up relatively early this morning and decided now was a good a time as any to start my fitness regime. The weather was inviting which always makes that first step easier to make.
We’ve got less than 6 weeks to go before the Corporate Games, which is basically a money making organisation that brings together teams of all types of sport from any company within the UK (there are other corporate games for Australia and the Americas I think). Damn I’m unfit. It’s not so much the distance I ran (roughly 3 miles) it’s just the continous nature of the run that isn’t what my body is used to. The basketball court doesn’t work that way. However like I said I’m really unfit and as I’ve got to run the court it’s prudent to get fit.
The Arup Basketball team will be there this year like we were last year. The difference is I guess that we now know what to expect. We’re less the new kids on the block. Having said that we’ll probably still be the ‘smallest’ team on the court. These guys are MASSIVE. Seriously. But you know the saying, the larger they are the harder they fall. In case anyone was wondering I’m the playmaker, or the point guard, I’m a towering 1.70m (5.5774278 feet apparently, I don’t do Imperial).
The Eisner nominations for 2005 have been announced. Weird one this year as it’s the first one since Eisner died.
Brandon Peterson has a brand new website. Not so sure about that navigation though.
Computer Arts have updated their website, which honestly is a massive improvement over their previous one.
Creative Suite 2 is out from Adobe. Interesting to see when Macromedia will release the next iteration of Freehand.
I’ve been having some serious WordPress funkiness going on, something to do with mySQL and stuff. Hardly what I want to talk about today but anyway, if you see an error message, it’s not me having a laugh, just so you know.
Every couple of months I jump into a new software package and gut it to try and make it sing for me. I’ve found that this is a way of keeping myself on the learning curve. Always pushing myself, because it’s incredibly easy to reach a comfort zone once you get working, and your brain turns to mush after a while. That’s something I realised early on in life, directly after leaving University, I knew that’s what I had to do to keep my brain sharp.
Last 4 or 5 months I’ve been concentrating on CSS and only dabbling in PHP. My Achilles heal though, is without a doubt my lack of PHP skills. In effect I have none. That however is going to change. I’m determined to change that. WordPress sites run on two languages, CSS to style it and PHP to run it. In order to get things done I can see where the PHP code is coming from, however for some reason I never thought that maybe it would be a good idea to actually try and make sense of the code, by learning the basics, I mean how hard can it possibly be?
Turns out, for me at least it’s not really that difficult, because I’m already very familiar with the concepts surrounding the coding language. I’m an Electrical and Electronic Engineer. I studied C and C++ at University, I know what a function is, an array, an integer, string and what all the operators mean. I never enjoyed it, because I never understood the joy of the C. I still don’t and don’t particularly want to try and find out, as the actual use, is probably lost on me. PHP however is a completely different story.
I scouted the internet and found these incredibly useful tutorials. Go to the tutorials by Melonfire.
By going through the first couple of tutorials, I assure you you’ll have a much better appreciation for how your site works. You’ll realise that things aren’t a black art any more. I feel soo much more comfortable hacking the plugins I’ve got running the site to actually work in the way I want them to. Which basically means a lot more work on my side. I guess it was inevitable for me to dive into PHP, if you’re feeling scared of diving into PHP, seriously I think you shouldn’t worry too much. The hardest step is the first one.
Not that I plan on writing any plugins any time soon, that’ll take at least another year ^_^.
Chris beat me to it. I’ve had this little post in my draft box for a couple of weeks now, so I guess now is a good a time as any to finish it off and publish it.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. This past year has seen me be online a great deal more than I’ve ever been in my life. In that time I’ve learnt soo much about how the web works, what the current trends are in web design, I’ve read an emmense amount of information, posts, comments, articles. The one thing that I enjoy the most out of this whole experience however is the amazing group of people that I interact with nearly every day.
It takes a while but eventually you start feeling like you know each other. There used to be a time when I was meeting someone new nearly every other day, due to work, or extra activities. It’s not as common as it used to be, but the web has kind of brought me in touch with a great number of people who I actually consider friends.
Friendship comes in a number of different forms, and the relationships you build with people differ according to the circumstances you meet them in. I remember a good while back there were two guys I met on a forum whom we used to ‘converse’ for hours via e-mail. Yeah it was slightly weird since this was during the early days of the internet and there was an added bit of precaution to anything you did on the net because it was so new, but Kieron and Ludovic were great guys, I haven’t ‘spoken’ to them in 3 years but I can still remember their names.
One thing that I will say is that it helps a lot more when the online person actually presents a part of himself. That’s when a connection is established. I remember Ludovic moving from Canada to Paris. I remember Kieron looking for a new job. I remember when Chris announced that his wife was pregnant. I remember when Matt changed jobs. Presenting a part of themselves, as friends do on a regular basis. I speak to Joshua quasi regularly and the man is a rock. Always there when I’ve asked for any help whatsoever. Michael and Joen in my mind go hand in hand.
And the list keeps on going and expanding (there are loads more, and I’d be here all night, and I’ve got stuff to do); and that thought comforts me. It’s truly amazing to see the effects of how blogging actually builds a sense of community.
I went to the dentist today. It’s pretty funny you could say that currently my family tradition is medicine (even though a generation before that we were carpenters) and for some reason I just never get the inclination to go to the doctors when something is wrong. I’ve very bad that way, but the rubbish health system in place in the UK, makes my disposition even worse. For those in the dark about the current National Health System in the UK, it goes something like this. You fall ill, go to a GP (General Practitioner), he sees what’s wrong with you and either helps cure you or refers you to a specialist.
Problem is of course that going to a GP doesn’t mean you see him then; oh no, you see him 2 to 3 weeks later. The specialist will come a couple of months after that depending on the waiting list etc. So you can understand why I’m a bit jadded about this system. For those saying:
That’s rubbish. I pay for national health insurance every month. In the 3 years I’ve been back in the UK I’ve wanted to see a doctor once, and didn’t get anywhere due to the aforementioned waiting 3 weeks bollocks.
So I broke a filling, and need to get that one replaced, added to a bit of general teeth cleaning and I’m good to go. I was actually scared what the guy was going to find lurking in my teeth, so I’m glad I actually got off this lightly. I guess the moral of the story is take care of your teeth people. If there’s one thing I’d tell my much younger self to do would have been to take care of my teeth.
They’re the only set you have, unless you’re 8, in which case why the hell are you reading this? Shouldn’t you be doing your homework?
While ‘conversing’ with Phu Ly, I thought that it would be cool to organise a WordPress meetup in London. I mean why should Denmark have a meetup and the UK be left behind in this area? Now for all those of you thinking to yourself, well how good is it actually going to be? I dunno, what I will say however is that I’ve done this online to real meeting endevour once before, for the Designate Online meetup a few months ago. I didn’t know ANYONE, and everyone else seemed to know each other. I got Martina to tag along just in case I had to use her as an excuse to leave.
Turned out to be one of the best evenings/days I’ve had in a while. Just a really good bunch of people, talking all sorts of things. Got some pointers about design, talked about topics that ACTUALLY interest me, with people that understand what the IE peekaboo bug is, know what Pixelsurgeon is etc.
This would be slightly different in that most people would know if I mentioned the design in any one of these blogs. Hey I might even bring a print out of a section of what Shuttle is currently looking like.
So if you’re in the UK and you’re interested in making a day event in London, prefereably on a Saturday, add your name and tell everyone else about it as well.
So hopefully rather than ‘conversing’ with each other, we can actually TALK to each other, and generally put faces to names.
I propose the:
Too soon? Too late? What does everyone else think?
The DC Comics Guide to COLORING and LETTERING Comics by Mark Chiarello and Todd Klein.
So I finished reading the first half of this book, which basically concentrates on the colouring of comic books. Mark Chiarello starts off by telling how it was done historically, and what the computer has done to elevate the art found in comic books to the next level in the past 15 years or so.
My first experience of computer colouring (and in fact most of the industry as well) was from Malibu, which was bought by Marvel Comics and done away with. Image come crashing through with cutting edge computer colouring, but now I guess I follow individual colourists. Not enough people give these incredibly talented people enough credit. I believe that the colouring in many ways can made or break a comic book, at least in terms of how it looks. How is reads is another issue completely.
The techniques showcased here are nothing ground breaking, but it’s nice to know what the deal is in the comic book industry. What the standard practices are. I read an article a while back in Computer Arts, they’d gotten Ben Templesmith to talk about his techniques since they’re mired in computer generation, and while a lot of what he said made sense, there were a couple of gray areas that I wished they’d given more thought to and fleshed out further. This book seems to hit that on the head.
My only real issue with this book is that there wasn’t enough concise techniques highlighted. What I mean by that is step by step guide that dealt with the actual colours and techniques used for simulating metal or plastic. There are several ways of accomplishing this, however there is a very
So I went into central london (as I generally do on a Saturday) and grabbed some comics. While we’re on the train, Stathis tells me we should go via Old Street to grab my prints from Constandinos. I actually got a small tingle in the back of my neck when he said this. Words cannot describe how amazing it felt to actually see my prints there ready to go. I hinted at this at the beginning of the year, start my limited edition print shop. I’ve been building towards this point for a good long while now.
Ages ago I had the idea of creating a small shop where I’d provide things that I myself would want to own. I see a lot of Cafepress shops around the place, and I can’t imagine lots of people buying things from them. The reason being that the actual items aren’t really all that appealing. It’s like a half assed effort on the owner’s part. They stick a logo on a mug and sell it for $15 plus postage, screw that for a laugh. I’d never sell something that I myself wouldn’t buy. If I decide to have a T-shirt on offer, you’ll be sure I’ve done it so that I can wear it myself, before I try to sell it off to anyone.
The first item on offer is the very first
Any print I decide to offer will have a print run limited to a maximum of 10 copies. The first copy will be mine (like the one pictured above), which reduces the number down to 9 copies to be sold. Since they’re coming from me directly I’ll sign and number them, on the front or back depending on the actual person’s preferance. This thing measures slightly larger than your typical A3 paper, and the paperstock is a fantastically thick 250msg. Costandinos, you sir, ROCK.
Once they’re gone, that’s it I guess. So if you’re interested go over to the shop.
So I decided to wear a tie yesterday. I don’t normaly wear ties, as I’ve been getting into my jumpers this winter, simply because I’m a mediteranean soul and need my warmth. However sometime on Thursday night I just had the inclination to wear something a bit smarter. I don’t know what it was, just had that feeling. So I ironed my white shirt, which I swear my mother would slap me around the face for even contemplating about wearing (it’s a pretty old shirt and looks old as well, there’s some rocket science for you); and my favourite blue tie. From the second someone saw me till the moment I walked into my house, I’ve been getting comments about that tie.
It’s made such an impact that no one that sees me hasn’t commented in one way or another. Don’t get me wrong some of the comments have been nice, it’s just that does wearing a tie really elevate you to becoming smartly dressed, or is it just the novelty that you generally don’t wear that sort of thing. I generally wear smart casual to work. The more I think about it, the more I’m actually contemplating continuing with the tie trend.
Then I’ll stop wearing one suddenly because I got bored, and everyone will be telling me how casual I look ^_^.
This is a sensetive topic. The current situation in Lebanon isn’t looking as great. It’s been over 45 days since Rafic El Harriri was assasinated. It’s amazing how an entire country was held together by the vision of one man.and the day after the assasination, I got severely depressed. All my memories from 80s war torn Lebanon came flooding back to me. I’ve generally got an appaling memory, most days I can’t remember what I had for dinner; having said that there are some aspects of my life I can never forget. I remember them in explicit detail. One such memory is during the summer when my mother and brother went down to Lebanon before my father. We were invited to go on a mini trip up to the mountains and down to Beirut.
On the drive down however I remember going though war stricken streets. Buildings were completely charcoal black and full of bullet holes, and as I was sitting in the back of the car looking at my country burnt and I remember this, tears started streaming.
This trip was a turning point in my life. It’s at this point that I realised how much I cared for my country.
This trip was very special to me, since it also marked the first time I ever had a cocktail from the absolutely amazing ‘Bliss House’. This little place is right opposite the AUB and serves something like 30 different cocktails, each one more amazing than the last.
I’ve been talking regularly with a Jasmina in Lebanon for the past few months, and I said something to her that’s stayed with me.
I’ve seen my country destroyed. Once is enough, once is too much.
Well that’s depressing. I’m a MASSIVE Flash fanatic. I love how the program is built, the interface, the freedom it provides. All these things make Flash one of my favourite programs, except for the past year or so I’ve got to say I’ve only really used it for colouring in and completing my images. The real reason behind that is I’ve been concentrating on creating content for a portfolio website, and that CSS has been occupying my time immensely.
I finally sat down today to try and start on the often beleaguered Emmortel.com. I thought well might as well have a nice animated button on BK. So I fired up the program,…and NOTHING. I’ve forgotten soo much. I guess everything is practice, but it’s pretty scary how rusty I am since I was really getting into Action scripting a year ago, and now I’ve got to effectively start from the beginning in that department!!
Nothing like a challenge really, since I’ve got less than a month to whip out a portfolio website, with a WordPress front page and a completely Flash interface.
Ages ago, when I finshed Grass for his Pillow I said that I’d write a better more full review of the great trilogy, Tales of the Otori. This set of books caught my eye in an ad on the tube in Camden. I remember the poster clearly since it’s also the cover of the first book. What attracted me to the actual story wasn’t soo much the poster, but the name of the book.
The first book as called ‘Across the Nightingale Floor’. I remember standing there thinking what a fantastically lyrical name for a book that was. I read the blurb which was something about forbidden love etc, and thought ok, it’s got samurai’s, and a fantastic name, let’s give this book a shot. Needless to say I wasn’t disappointed. The books are written by one Lian Hearn, which is a pseudonym. A friend a work, who we used to talk about books all the time, mentioned the writer was originally a children’s author from Australia, and decided to go for another name to prove that she shouldn’t be categorised as a children’s author alone.
The books are set in a world that resembles Feudal Japan in many ways. The thing is though, it’s not set in Japan. I think this was because Japanese History buffs are fanatics. They’ll remember every minute detail about everything, and call you up on it when/if you go wrong. I guess it would also restrict the story a great deal, as there are some elements of the supernatural in here as well. These are very subtle but add another great layer to the story itself.
The main characters are Takeo and Kaede. It shows their struggle to being with one another in a world mired in tradition, rules and regulations. The story fuses all the ingredients of a good story, mystery, love, war, betrayal and revenge.
There is serious talk of the movie being made, but personally I think you should get these books first. They are very well written books, with a lot of great twists and turns. Now that I’ve finished them I’m a bit sad because I’ve got to wait a while before I find the next set of books that will take my imagination away.
Okay so we’re driving down to Wales. I get in the car (it was a rental),
Luckily he actually had 3 tapes on him. Where, why and how, I do not know. We get to Yiota’s place and she’s kept his ENTIRE cassette collection. Over 100 of these things!!! Now those who know me know what a complete techie junkie I actually am. The only accessory that I’m not all that fussed about is my mobile phone, but that’s another post for another time. Having said that, after this weekend drive, I really miss the low tech situation induced by having cassettes. I’ll explain.
Growing up as you can imagine everyone had a walkman, much in the same way everyone’s got an ipod now. These things go in cycles, and there will come a day, when the Ipod is a thing of the past to be replaced by something more fresh and lively etc. The problem however with the transition between going all digital, is you can no longer share music in the same way. When I used to make a mix tape, it would take me 3 hours. To choose the songs, work out how long they were, how they would fit into the tape. How one song should flow into another. Then you’d spend time sorting out the outside cover of the tape. Do I make it colourful. Can I be bothered to write the song name and the artist name. Hell I got this off the radio, do I even KNOW that information?
And then once it was all over and you’d listened to it for like 1000 times, you would either relegate it to the old tapes pile, to be replaced by the new one.
Ah but here’s where the magic comes into play. Years later, as you’re driving from Wales to London, and the radio is playing the latest shit from Britney Spears, you relive your teens in a way only a tape could do. Sure the songs exist on my ipod, but not those specific songs, not in that order, and not something that can be shared around, as a PHYSICAL object with a stamp of your character all over it.
I’m down in Cardiff this weekend. Or as the Welsh like to call it Caerdydd! Road trip down with Stathi and his dancing ass, to brighten up his sister Yiota’s who’s a completely stressed bunny. She’s in the final month and a half of her course, so obviously this is where you stress the most when in University. Then once that’s over you’ve got the great situation of stressing to find a job. Ah the memories.
It’s really funny but Wales is known to be a pretty rainy place. Must be pretty lucky since both times I’ve been here (last time was for Sarah’s wedding) the weather was as stunning and fresh as it is today.
Rin got second place in the Alex King Theme Design Competition!
Well it’s not really an award, it’s a competition I know, but still it’s the closest to an award the WordPress community has so indulge me for a moment while I bask in this feeling, and go through this little acceptance speech, honest it’s not going to be long. (Now if I ever get an Eisner that’s a completely different issue altogether, all bets are off then, but I digress).
First off I’d like to thank my partner in crime Joshua, who came through in flying colours. It took us three days to convert Manji2 into Rin, and another day for me to sort out the actual manual etc.
Rootie for being there at the beginning of the Rin & Manji expedition.
To all the users who’ve posted here and on the forums and sent me e-mails of thanks, support and bug reports I thank you, would have been what it is without you guys.
Honestly I’m not just saying this, after seeing some of the other entrants I thought that at best we’d get a mention, but nothing else really. So it honestly came as a complete surprise to see it there up second. Completely solid competition.
As said elsewhere, the real winners however in this competition where all the WordPress users. I can think of 50 designs that look absolutely fantastic, and they’re all under a GPL license. Sweet.
How come no one’s really mentioned this on the blogosphere? Symphony is the new kid on the block when it comes to blogging software, and it’s a complete beauty. It looks as slick as hell and has got some great little features.
As I look at what they’ve done to it I can’t help but smile at the fact that we’ve also, so far on the shuttle team, addressed several of these points as well. We may have gone about them in a slightly different way, but it’s still very cool to see we’re on the right track.
It’s been a bit of a slow development 3 weeks on that front, since the design half of the team is a bit pre-occupied with the real world. I’m making it a point to jump back into it later on this week.
Now why did they change the name from Typeworks? I did like that name, not that I’ll use the system mind you, just wondering is all.
In what shall be now lovingly refered to as my IMPULSE buy of the year, I got myself an A4 wacom tablet today. Am I not beautiful?
You certainly are.
I’m sitting there and Darren walks in and sees how frustrated I was getting with my mouse, and trying to colour in my latest drawing. So he asks me why I don’t buy a graphics tablet? Honestly I couldn’t give him a reason, apart from the fact that they were too expensive. My daddy always says that you should never let money stand in your way….no that’s a COMPLETE lie, he’s more than happy for me to store the cash away for rainy days, I on the other hand don’t have that much restraint when it comes to certain things. Art equipment, books, graphic novels, and as it would seem computer equipment.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now, since I took a picture of the tablet, I thought I’d also show people where Broken Kode is made every day. Hey who knows how long I’ll stay in this house. Does anyone else have similar photos of their ‘work’ environment?
About 3.5 years ago I was scared of computers. Well not so much scared, as just didn’t really want anything to do with them. This I guess was due to my brother, who when we brought a computer back in 93 or whenever, decided to methodically trash the thing, and install viruses on for shits and giggles. Obviously my frustration had it’s limits and I just didn’t bother with the whole thing.
Fast-forward to University and I got by using the Uni computers and borrowed a 586 from my buddy Richard who’d just bought a Laptop. I did a bit of word processing, e-mailing and message boards. Very little else. My main creative output was to actually drawing and painting. I would spend days on end on a single drawing. After I’d compiled enough work I decided to set up a website and have an online portfolio like all the pros. The only person I knew that could help me with this project was my brother.
We spent an entire month sorting out my website. I would sketch it and he’d do everything else. I’d ask him if he could make this happen or that happen. He came through in grand style, and that’s when kalscreations was born. It was updated once, and never again. This was back in 2000.
When I graduated in 2001, I decided it was time to get another website up and running. Again I enlisted the help of my brother for this little project. This time however he didn’t last. If anything I was even more demanding than before. You see I’m a complete anal perfectionist. It’s a sickness I guess. He lasted 2 weeks this time before he just looked at me, having reached the end of his rope, and said
' You know what, if you want that effect, DO IT YOURSELF'.
‘What do you mean do it myself? I don’t know how!’
‘Learn.'
So I did. It was tough. It took months upon months to understand photoshop, it took agest to understand how Flash worked. It took a while to get to grips with vectors. The main thing was persistence. I don’t know what reminded me of this story but I thought I should write it down and say thanks to my bro who pushed me into the deep end when the time was right.
What’s it about? It tells the story of what happens to all the fables of children’s stories after they’ve ended, but there’s a twist. They’ve been run out of their ‘homeland’ and are now living amongst us in downtown New York. They’ve got some magic to help prevent the ‘mundies’ (that’s me and you) from seeing their true form. King Cole is the Mayor of ‘Fabletown’, Snow White actually runs the show, and well the Big Bad Wolf is called Bigby Wolf and he’s the Sheriff of the town within a city. Did you know that Snow White has a sister? Apparently this is true, she’s called Rose Red.
The main mystery here is that the ‘Adversary’ is the person that effectively drove them out of their homelands, but we don’t know who the adversary actually is. His identity is a mystery. There’s an emmense amount of backstory involved here and Willingham is adding layers to the story.
What’s great for me is that I know what his style of writing actually is. Nothing stays the same. Time actually passes, months, years whatever the story calls for. He’s not scared to off characters, or change characters. Constantly introduces new characters that you just completely forgot about, and that adds yet another amazing layer to the already great cast of characters.
This book started 1 year before the release of Shrek, so don’t think this is cashing in on that story. It’s very different with a great deal of maturity involved here. It’s a Vertigo comic book series so there’s bound to be an edge here. The covers are provided by the SPECTACULAR James Jean, who’s my favourite artist of the past 2 years, easily. Never ceases to amaze me what the guy comes up with month in, month out.
The Art. With volume 5, Mark’s not as on form as he was in volume 4 where it showed how much fun he was having illustrating every page. Don’t get me wrong there’s nothing bad with the art but if you compare the two you’ll know what I mean. I got the feeling in volume 4 that he finally found his groove on the book. Knew every single character, and was experimenting with the page layouts every single page, and it was great. Added such a personal touch and essentially for me made it his completely. In this volume, not sure if it was something intentional (ie handed down by the editor) or due to lack of time, but that experimentation just wasn’t there to be found. Still certain ‘little’ aspects of the story were just too cute to mention (and I’m not going to because that would be a MAJOR spoiler and I hate spoilers).
I keep giving this series to friends of mine that are girls. They seem to love it more than I do. There’s something in this series that strikes a cord with female readers more than it does with male readers, but it’s a brilliant read for any gender. If you’re looking for something that will remind you of your childhood and then turn it on it’s head, I highly recommend you check out Fables. Chances are very high that you’ll come back for more.
In a bit of an unusual mood for me. I was meant to do a bit of drawing this weekend. That’s not happened. Instead I’ve gone out with friends, played some basketball, done some reading and generally speaking very little creating. I think after close to three months solid of concentrating on my various projects I just really needed the breather. It’s strange but I just really can’t bring myself to write any words on my script, can be arsed to open up photoshop, don’t want to pick up a pencil and concentrate on a drawing.
One project that I couldn’t help but tinker with was the site design ever so slightly; wish I could make my comments details show up in IE (god how I loathe IE bugs, I can never get them to work out, seriously pisses me off every single time I do a redesign, something screws up in IE).
Tonight’s agenda is more reading and Smallville. Hopefully this break will have energised my batteries, and I can create like crazy from tomorrow.
Due to this, I generally have no inclination to actually staying late. Ah but this place Anam is different. I got in there, and it’s tiny. Hmm let’s see what it’s like downstairs. Still tight, and then I realised what music I was listening to. Cool and the Gang, the good MJ stuff, some funk, some soul. The DJ attempted putting on some hip hop which lasted 2 minutes with this crowd. Don’t get me wrong some Hip Hop I can handle, but not what he put on and not following on from the fantastic selection ( a lot of which I must say I’d never heard of but Archie asked for a couple of tracks from the DJ so maybe we’ll get some more new music as well).
I liked the atmosphere in there, and the people that worked there were pretty cool as well. Definitely one to do again.
I’ve got a backlog of magazines the size of a small mountain and I’m just filing though it over the next couple of days. Today I went through WebDesigner issue 103. Now generally speaking it’s a decent enough magazine. I like some of the tutorials they’ve done (bearing in mind I’ve only bought this mag twice before), this issue had a massive feature about web templates. The last third of the article actually had a decent enough write up of blogging templates and generally explained a lot to the novice about blogs in general.
Our very own ScriptyGoddess got a mention, as did Not (that) Ugly as well. It was really strange seeing these familiar net faces being mentioned in a magazine, but there you have, well deserved Ladies. It’s great to see that WordPress is spoken in the same breathe as Blogger and Moveable Type, hopefully in the coming years it’ll be Blogger, WordPress and then Moveable Type as WP takes over.
Searching for a link to Webdesigner, I’ve got to say for a magazine that is all about the web, that’s an incredibly CRAP online presence they’ve got there. I mean what the hell? Poor, poor showing guys. I expected oh soo much better.
As my magazine subscription to Computer Arts comes close to an end, I’m really thinking about switching over to Digit, as the content in there is more focused on actual reviews and articles, and they provide and really support open source programs. Blender for example was featured in the previous issue, and I found out about Expression via Digit.
I’ve decided to go for a more dynamic approach to v3 of this site. There are a number of reasons, but mainly it’s because I’ve been sitting on this design for a while now, and I really wanted to start using some of the features I’d set up for it, mainly my snippets column. I plan on updating that part of the site pretty regularly.
The actual redesign was spawned from the need to showcase certain things and to actually highlight others. I knew that I wanted to showcase Manji and Rin a bit more on the front page, and subsequent themes I am actively involved in developing.
There are loads of tweaks I’ve got to get around to and complete a number of static pages, some of which are hinted at the top of this page, but I’m in no rush right now. If I build this content in such a way I’ll be able to reuse it later on down the line for future updates. I wonder how long I’ll stay with this design?
Themes Tangent: What I’ve found really amazing, is just the sheer number of themes that are now available for the WordPress community. We’re talking well over 100 themes and counting.
The trick now is to try and seperate the good from bad, from the ugly. Some I’ve got to say are exceptional themes. Blix is one theme I think is brilliant. It’s subtle colours and clean lines really do appeal to me. Another one is Green Marinee which I think is another slick addition to the great WordPress theme arsenal. K2 is lurking on the horizon, and Persian has always been around kicking ass and taking names.
Having a good looking site in WordPress is now not an option, it’s a given.
Okay it’s finally here. After nearly 2 months, and 2000 downloads later, Manji2 has now blossomed into Rin. The major differences between this and the Beta version and the final release is really in the stylings. There have been some tweaks in the code, but those are just falling in line with the developments for Manji. Rin has been submitted for the Alex King Design Competition, but I’ve got to say it’s up against some pretty awesome competition. I’ve got a pretty extensive post in me about themes, their development and the current state of affairs on the horizon, but that’s for another time.
So if you want to have a look at what Rin looks like go over here and have a look, I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised. (yeah I know the bloody name is still Manji2preview, I’m working on it, trust me I’ve got some pretty major updates for this place as well in the coming 12 hours or so).
As always my partner in crime Joshua did a great job with the mess I presented him.
I’ve been coasting for the past couple of weeks. You know the feeling you get when things go around in a circle and you’re a slave to a certain routine. That’s been my life for the past 3 weeks. I’ve been buried in my design and writing. Not much drawing, which is annoying. I remember when this Easter break came 3 years ago. I spent the entire 3 days drawing. Nothing else. Didn’t touch the computer just drew. There’s something indescribable when a piece is finished. It’s more saticfying than any redesign, because if you’re like me I’m constantly tinkering around with a site. I can’t help it, but a drawing, when that’s complete that’s it. All the faults are there and you can’t do anything about it.
One thing I do wish I had when drawing is a control-z (undo), soo annoying ^_^.
I’ve not actually thought about what I’m going to do this 4 day break, but I think I’ll try my hardest to step away from the computer. It occupies such a massive part of my life anyway, so I’m going to try and recreate 3 years ago and see what I come up with.
Manji2 is NO MORE. I hinted at this before. Manji2 is being renamed Rin. I’ve spent the entire evening sorting out the final release. There has been a lot of stylistic changes to the final theme. I’m currently working on the icons which will accompany it. The first flavour to be released will be Nebular. I’ve got several new flavours up my sleeve, but it’s a bit premature to be talking about that right now. Flipping from Beta to Final release you can see the evolution. The Beta version has been out since the 1st of February, so I think it’s about time I got my ass in gear and released the proper version.
I’ll hopefully release it sometime tomorrow or the day after that, but it’s coming soon, very soon.
First we taken Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
The point is my buying anything Superman related means something fishy is going on. Oh sure I’m a smallville fan, but then again most people I talk to can find something appealing with that show. The GN (Graphic Novel) in question is called Superman: Secret Identity, and it’s crafted by the great team of Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen. The last time I can remember these two gents got together and actually did a story together was for the great but ill-fated Shockrockets.
I’ve read the odd story by Kurt, a bit of Astro City, the great Marvels, Shockrockets, but I don’t hunt everything he does, only stuff that I think could probably interest me.
I absolutely love Stuart’s work, and he’s elevated his game a complete level with this series. He’s on another plateau, and I already thought the guy was an exceptionally talented artist.
This book has been released a while now, but I bought it on the basis of great reviews it’s gotten both from Augie over at CBR and Randy and Don. I’ve got to say it really doesn’t disappoint in any way.
The story follows a real life Clark Kent. He lives in our world, where Clark Kent is the character from the comics. He lives in Picketsville, and his parents thought it might be a good idea if they called him Clark. The irony of course is that he does have Superman’s powers. What really shines in this book is the singular and completely distinct voice that Kurt has given Clark. He’s meant to be real, and the skill involved in making him sound real is honestly amazing. There are loads of little details that I really appreciated in this book as well, I’d rather not say them because it’s better when you read them in the book.
I absolutely love the Lois in this version as well. I’ve generally got a thing for Lois’s (except the movie version, not such a fan), and she doesn’t disappoint in this version either.
The colours are muted and yet vibrant when they have to be. Stuart’s done everything, drawn, inked and coloured this book and it’s an amazing body of work, worth the entry cost alone. Add the fantastic story and character development that’s been weaved into the story and it’s a book that is seriously deserving of your attention.
I thought I’d give a small update on the progress of this little project as I’ve not spoken or said anything about it since Joen joined the team. It’s been nearly over a month since we started working on this little project in ernest. The first 2 weeks were spent discussing options, thoughts, design issues, and everything else under the sun. Many e-mails were exchanged between us, and then Joen got the ball rolling with the first stab at a sketch. Since then it’s been a pretty cool session of photoshop tennis between Michael, myself, Joen, and even our code-fu guru Chris jumped into it as well.
What’s great is that with every iteration you can see the actual design developing more and more clearly. I flick through the original sketch and what we’re currenly on and I just have a massive smile on my stupid mug, because I can’t wait to be able to start using this interface. Trust me when I say that it’s going to kick some major ass in both the design department and the functionality/usability department.
The thing is good stuff honestly takes time. We’re all exceptionally busy people, and something of this scale takes hours of careful thought. None of us are in a rush to get it done for any reason. When it comes out it will be something beautiful, and will elevate the ‘Press’ from the typewriters. In the meantime if you’re really wanting some colour in your blog check out Not That Ugly for something different for your interface.
You know all those stories you hear about English weather being terrible, blah blah blah. For the most part it’s true. The thing is it doesn’t rain all day. That’s not true. The standard however is for a constant white cloud to be above your head 70% of the year. That’s what we call in daylighting terms as an overcast sky.
Yesterday ushered the first real day of spring for us here in London, giving us a glimse of things to come. Some would argue that the winter was just too damn long, and to be honest I can’t wait to get down on the basketball court at Chalk Farm and really get fit again. I work on the third floor, and we’ve got phenomenally shit lifts where I work. The irony of having crap services in a building full of building service engineers in not lost on me I assure you, but I was actually caught out of breathe the other day walking up the stairs, and I it was at that moment that I wished for spring to come and for me to actually get some exercise in.
Today it would seem brings about another glorious day, so I’m going to head over to Hampstead Heath, grab a frisbee from somewhere and maybe some nosh, and chill out before the grey/white sky comes back again.
Allow me this moment to take a second and thank EVERY SINGLE person that’s ever given any time to WordPress. Be it in the help forums, helping out with the Wiki, sorting out a theme, sorting out a plugin or generally trying to get people to use WordPress and Open Source software more.
I’ve been slogging away at version 3. There are a number of reasons for me doing this. For a start I learn soo much every single time I do a design. I’m not a coder, not even close, and yet I’m starting to understand what’s going on every time I decide to do something new.
The great thing about the WP community is the fact that if I’ve got an idea for something, chances are somebody’s already had that idea, implemented it and made it into a downloadble script that I can manipulate and incorporate into the design. Sure it’s frustrating trying to get something to work, that just plain doesn’t want to play ball, but I’m extremely lucky in that if I’ve ever got a problem one of my buddies who are infinitely better at this than I am, come in and give me a shove in the right direction.
I’m tweaking this locally, just playing around with things, but I’m really getting into taking my standard base (in my case Manji, since I know the code upside down, and inside out), and tweaking to try and get things smaller and smaller in terms of file size). Every Kbyte I shave off I have a little giggy ^_^.
I’ve got one final script I need to incorporate but I’m having troubles deciding which way to go. It’s that incorporating of images into a design. This is for the Manji gallery that’s been brewing for so long. Basically all I want is a script that will enable me to quickly add a thumbnail to a folder. Once that image is displayed then I want it to be clickable and to have the exact same surroundings as a single post, i.e with spaces for comments etc. Also I want this space to be integrated and controlled via the control panel as well.
Anyone have any ideas which script/hack/plugin will do this? I know it exists, just wish I knew which one it was…
Like a butterfly Manji2 is going to evolve into something more, and the name, well the name will have to change to reflect that. After a few nights of thinking, I’m prone to saying things and then going back on my word, I think there might be a theme for the Alex King Competition coming soon. Probably won’t get there till it’s down to the wire, but alas good things come to those who wait.
I swear this had nothing to do with the actual recently announced $500 prize, damn dog, this thing is getting bigger and better. Work has already begun for a week now, and the proof is in the e-mails…….ooh cryptic.
Hmm seems like we’ve been heard. Larry’s posted on his website about the True Facts review. That’s pretty cool. He checks out what people have said about his books across the net good and bad and presents them. He’s done this for a while now, so it’s nice to get mentioned.
Seems Larry’s also read my previous post where I got on my high horse and said stuff about Brian Wood’s current body of work. Reading that post it would seem that I hated Woods. Which is really not true at all. In fact the proof that I’m a fan of the man’s work can be found in this little post here. In that post I put Channel Zero as one of my Top 11 graphic novels. Considering I’ve got over 300 graphic novels, in two different countries, I think that’s a pretty major indicator that I like Channel Zero; but as that post pointed out I think Woody’s lost his edge. I’ve got most of Bri’s work
the last three being what I consider his best work. Notice I don’t own anything past the Couriers.
Since The Couriers I just thought “No this just isn’t good enough”. His work usually has so much energy and passion, but Pounded, The Couriers etc all left me with a sour taste in my mouth, and I realised that he wasn’t a creator I could follow blindly as I do with many creators, whether the story even slightly appeals or not, because a good creator will make me interested in what they’re writing about. I was disappointed when he decided not to finish/start The Walk (aborted series), because that sounded like something I would enjoy and had that Woods edge.
Having said that I will be buying Demo when Larry decides to release it as a trade paperback, because I’m not buying your floppies Larry ^_^.
Finally got around to sorting this out. All I wanted was a holder page. It’s been on my mind for like 1 month, but I always found other things that took preference in completing. Now that a date for it to go live has been set I’ve got my work cut out for me. I’ve not built a complete Flash website in a year, as I’ve been diving deeper in CSS, PHP and WordPress. Let’s see what’s been happening on the flash landscape shall we.
<li>I must say that it all falls into perspective when you write everything down and just have a look at the list. Best thing I've done this week however is using my moleskin book as my personal organiser. </li>
<li>I've got MASSIVE news on the future of Manji2, and a couple of surprises for Manji-proper. There have been hints over the last month or so. Those of you awake at the wheel might have picked up on some rumblings.</li>
<li>After watching the Star Wars trailer, I'm actually kind of excited. I promised myself I wouldn't let Lucas do this to me again, but the bastard just keeps chucking CGI at me, with lightsabers and wookies. What the hell am I supposed to do? <em>Hint: Remember how bad Episode II was? Yeah, that's better, back down to earth.</em></li>
<li>I'm on page 26 of my script, which is amazing news. I've never actually ever reached this far, where the previous 26 pages weren't utter crap. The script's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but at least there's something down on paper, which is a lot more than I had 2 weeks ago when I revisited my script. 500 words a day is really tough work. </li>
<li>Saw Constantine yesterday, I'll post a review later on this week.</li>
The book is a pocket guide, so you can guess the size of this thing, and it collects twenty-one articles and an introduction from Matt Fraction.
Since there was a bit of time between when the articles were written and when Larry finally got round to compiling the book itself, he’s gone back in and offered commentary on various topics he raised at the time, giving the news after the fact.
As an aspiring comic book creator, that will probably have to self publish my wares to the world, books like this are basically essential reading. If I come out with even a nugget of information that I deem useful it will have been worth the cover price.
There were a couple of articles in there that were exceptionally useful to me. Some articles where very amusing to read, while others went no absolutely nowhere.
I guess this isn’t exactly a detailed guide of what you have to do to write, draw, letter, colour, distribute, promote, sell your comic book work. What this book essentially is a checklist of sorts. It’s meant to bring certain topics to the fore for you to remember that your job as an independant creator of work does not end with the writing and the drawing.
It’s a light read and I guess that was the point, but if you’re interested in publishing on your own I guess True Facts is a nice primer on what you’re getting yourself into.
Seems everyone and their dog is trying to come up with ways to maximise their productivity. I can sympathise completely. I’ve been searching for the past year for software, (open source generally) that might fit the bill. The route to go I guess would be using a Personal Information Manager, or PIM.
I’ve downloaded and installed my fair share of this type of software. I’ve got Info Angel 1.6 before they sold out like Moveable Type and went from Freeware to commercial. I’ve got a copy of Virtuoso, and Essential PIM.
I keep waiting for new on Chandler but that project seems to be as slow as an old person on the tube.
Owen has been giving this some thought I see and has come up with another solution using ShirusuPad . I’ve tried this, and the text is too small in the post-its. Generally speaking it’s a nice little package but it’s not organised enough for me.
I even read the post on using WordPress as a PIM, which I wasn’t really happy with. Tasks by Alex King might be something I might give a try sometime in the near future.
I’ve tried writing on paper, but I never actually go back and have a look at the bloody things often enough. Question: Does anyone have any alternatives I’ve not mentioned here?
The main problem for me is that I know exactly what I need to do in most cases, it’s just that I’ve not got a decent enough structure to deal with everything.
Earlier this week an idea hit me, why not allocate a specific amount of time on any one task. Once the time is up move on to the next topic, regardless of whether or not it’s finished. You can come back to it later tomorrow, or if you’ve got enough time left after the end of the scheduled things to do that night/day. 1hour, no more no less.
So far it seems to be working a charm. I get a lot more done cross-platform. i.e on all the various projects I’ve got going, over a longer period of time every little bit helps.
Now see this is weird. I’ve been having some issues getting gmail e-mails to get through to Lebanon. Seems it’s really random whether or not the e-mails I send or receive on my gmail account get through or not.
I know it’s gmail related because I used my work e-mail address and it all went smoothly no problems. Has anyone had any problems with gmail eating up e-mails? I’ve gone and set up an e-mail via my hosting plan, the thing is though that with Dreamhost everything takes a set amount of time. Like a mysql database takes an hour to get going, same deal with setting up an e-mail address.
Also while I’m on the subject, maybe someone can shed some light on something that’s been annoying me for a while now. Every once in a while something will happen and I won’t be able to connect to my website. The browser comes up with a message to the effect of site does not exist, and I’ve got to reboot my router, and turn off my computer and kill the cache and wait for a while and do all sorts of other rubbish before I get to see my bloody site again. What’s annoying as you might have guessed is that it’s only specific to my site. WTF is that all about?
Five years ago a handful of designers decided to band together and relaunch their sites on the 1st of May. It’s a nice idea and keeps things fresh and gets a target into people’s heads. Everyone needs a target and this date is as good as any really.
The 2005 version of the website is live and kicking.
I’m going to be sorting out one of my 2 sites for that date for sure, however BK version 3 will come out sooner. The reason I’m going to go to another design will become very clear once I get it done. I’ve been tinkering about and I must say less is definitely more.
Site Number 2 will go live on the 1st of May for sure, it’ll be mainly flashtastic with a bit of WordPress thrown in there for good measure.
I just got back fron the Thirteen Sense concert. It’s been years since I’ve been to a gig I actually wanted to go to, much less actually enjoyed. I’m not a gig person in general, simply I guess because I’ve never been organised enough in that department to actually do anything about it, and I’m not clued up enough as to who’s around at the time, in the city I live in. I guess I don’t actively hunt these things down. Case in point if it wasn’t for Laurent I’d not have known about Thirteen Sense playing Shepherd’s Bush tonight.
Now these guys Pollen come on stage, and they had the right attitude, and they had a vibrancy to their sound. I’d never heard of them before, and never heard their music but after their set I wanted to hear more. So much so that I went and got their EP, which has a total of 3 tracks. The EP’s called Soldier On, and they can be found on www.pollenmusic.com.
What I liked about them was how down to earth they seemed. They knew they had to do that rubbish encore thing that all bands do, but at least they did it in a funny way.
They had a lot of energy in them. Gladys loved how he was obviously enjoying playing the piano, and while I was sitting there taking it all in, I just had a flashback to when I was 7 years old. It’s one of those memories where I swear I’d forgotten completely, that only came back to me while I was sitting there in the theatre. When I was 7 I took up playing the piano. My piano teacher Zoe saw a lot of potential in me, and asked if I wanted to take this seriously. To which I obviously said yes, because I loved the sound, and still do, of the piano. The problem was that at the time my father couldn’t afford to buy a larger keyboard or a piano for me to practice. I was left with only a 3.5 key casio, which my teacher obviously knew just wasn’t enough. So my brief encounter ended. Thing is though my parents obviously felt disappointed and probably exceptionally frustrated with the situation, because years later after a few years had passed and a cheap piano was on the market they asked the question again. I said yes again, only life got in the way, and my priorities changed and I’ve not played the piano since I was 17.
While I sat there looking at Thirteen Sense blow me away with their sound, I started dreaming about what could have been.
I don’t think I can give a higher recommendation to see these guys live if they’re in your area.
While on the DO forums (that’s Designate Online), the topic of recommended design books came up. The one that caught my eye straight away was this little book called Freewave. I read the amazon review, thought about it for like 10 seconds and quickly ordered. Yes Amazon is very lucky to have people like me, suckers for books, even bigger suckers for experimental books.
So what sets Freewave apart from the other design books out there, that have literally pages upon pages of design and illustration within their covers? A very simple idea. All the FILES that make up the images within the book are included on a DVD that comes together with book. Run that through your head a little. 248 pages, each page is made up of several files, all there for you to analyse and see how they were made, and here’s the great part, it’s all under (as far as I can tell from the legal jargon they’ve decided to use on the front of the page) a form of creative commons license. So you’re free to use the images and files in anyway you see fit.
Now you might think that the book would be filled with utter shit. Fortunately that’s not the case. The book’s got some brilliant designers contributing to it’s pages and what’s great is how they’re all grouped into specific areas of design.
<ol>
Honestly I’d love to contribute to something like this in the future. If you’re a designer, buy the book. ISBN 1-86154-273-9
Ok so I’ve finished the design for the site, would you believe I’m getting itchy again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s taken me soo long to get it the way I think I want it and now I’m having second thoughts. This is not normal. There are sites that haven’t had any modifications done to them in years. They get slightly updated here and there, and here I am already thinking about Version 3 of this site. I’ve promised myself that I wouldn’t get round to it until I complete a 3D model of CoCo. Until that happens and the image that I’ve got in my head actually becomes a reality, no redesign.
I guess my problem is that I do actually enjoy the design process, and I’ve got too many ideas. Always generating ideas, always wanting to try new things since I guess it’s really good fun, and a great learning curve. There are several areas of BK that I’d like to sort out, but I guess it’ll be something that I build upon. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and both content and ideas take time to accumilate.
I know it’s a complete waste of time for me to start building another site from scratch just for the fun of it when my current incarnation really doesn’t have anything wrong with it, but I guess it’s just a need for design I’ve got right now, inspiration calls. I know I’m not alone since Paul is forever creating beautiful designs all the time. Seriously he’s list of themes he’s made for his site are beautiful to look at. I guess I’m not the only one that gets itchy fingers.
Update: After sleeping on it, it’s not the design that’s at fault, I think I found out what I was unhappy with, and that’s the lack of detail. It’s too simple, which to be honest wasn’t actually the route I was going for. I wanted playful, and lively, fun, but simple wasn’t really one of them. As it’s gone that’s what I’ve ended with simpley because I wanted it to be useable. Right it’s time to bring it all together. Into a tight package. Live and learn I guess.
About 2 months ago I sent out my flower for the Building Letters edition for the Tsunami Relief effort.
Seems the flower was accepted which is nice, because I’ve given money and this is something I actually did that I’m proud of giving, since nothing I create is lost, just archived waiting to be used later on.
My flower is part of the Fleurons of Hope font set. It can be found here: MyFonts website
Now I can understand they took liberties with how this is shown, but I wish they’d just contacted me to ask me if it’s ok the way it was presented. It would have been nice to have recieved an e-mail saying ‘Yeah thanks it’ll be included in the set’. I found out via Typographica and had to scroll through all the fonts.
I only hope they get the colour version correctly in the magazine and that the mag sells lots and lots. Just in case people are wondering what the original looks like:
First of all I’d like to thank everyone who’s taken an interest in Manji. It’s been an absolute joy watching all you wonderful people who have taken the code made it your own and come up with some fantastic designs. I’ve got to setup a gallery to set up to showcase all your wonderful designs, it’s on my to-do list I promise you.
It’s taken me 3 months to finally reach this stage where I can leave the code in peace knowning all the fixes that I wanted to get done have been completed and it’s finally the way I want it. This is in no small part thanks to everyone who downloaded it and commented on the theme. (BTW the theme has been downloaded over 4000 times since it was launched on the 5th of December 2004, so again thanks for all the kind words and support).
<li>The template now remembers who visited and commented previously. It's the same little javascript found in action on BK. I like this little script so I've included it in here.</li>
<li>
WP’s nextpage function now works for the individual pages as well. It was just a missing tag really, so can’t really consider that a bug.
I don’t think I’ll be editing the code any more. The only reason the code is ever going to change from my POV is if Root wants to revisit the code and sort it out, in the only way he knows how. Otherwise all my attention (with respect to Manji that is) is going to be focused on the manual, Manji2 and other flavours, oh yes ^_^.
So Monsieur Alex King has begun his second annual WordPress Theme design competition. Interesting. Now I remember a few people got really annoyed with the last one of these, and while I really am with Alex on the reason behind the competition I can see where the apprehension can come from.
Will I be entering the competition? Highly unlikely. There is several reasons for this:
The point I’m trying to make is a template competition can be a good thing, but the judges will have to be able to discard the themes have got some obvious fundamental flaws. Some people might take short cuts, and might not really care about what the CSS looks like or is structured. It took me something like a week to get the structure of the Manji CSS correct and cleaned up in the way it’s presented. I had the luxury of time on my hand. Will the people entering this competition have the same luxury?
Oh don’t get me wrong I don’t claim Manji is perfect for a second, but I think anyone who’s contacted me with regards to a problem I’ve tried to solve it for them straight away, even though I’m not a coder, and generally speaking they’ve not been serious.
Which brings the next point up, what happens to the forums when people start asking questions left right and centre? Are the creators of the themes going to offer support or are they going to be lumped on the poor support forums? When Manji came out I had a forum that killed my site for a day and a half. Sorry that’s not happening again. Until I find a forum system I can trust and update easily I’m not putting another Manji forum up.
So good luck to all those entering the competition, I hope it’s a success, but if you’re thinking about entering be prepared for a lot of work ahead, unless you’re a coding guru ^_^.
Now here’s an interesting situation for me. I just got an e-mail from Godaddy, my domain registration site, and they’re asking me whether or not I want to re-register iliosnare.com. I bought the domain last year and I’ve not touched it since then. I’ve thought about it, but I just wasn’t ready to do with it what I wanted. I’ve got a much better idea about what I want to do, and I’ve collected enough material for it as well.
I’ve always wanted one portfolio site and one blog. Broken Kode is my little wordy playground and I’ve learnt soo much because of it and switching over to WordPress. I feel I’m ready now to do the deed and jump in with both feet into the online portfolio for all my illustration.
The thing is I’ve got two site names that I can use, either Emmortel or Iliosnare. Either in my eyes are cool. Emmortel will always be part of my domain registered names, since it’s what I chose when I joined Dreamhost.
The question I’m pondering is whether or not to actually use iliosnare or just forget about it and use Emmortel as the portfolio site.
I don’t play computer games. Takes too much of my very precious time. I’ve got a list the size of my arm in terms of things I want to do that playing video games just seems like a complete and utter waste. However the only PS game I own is Final Fantasy VII. I loved everything about this game. The characters, the plot, the graphics, the gameplay everything.
So I’m in WHSmiths (magazine, bookstore, dvd you get the picture store) and I’m flipping through the latest 3D World mag simply because I thought the cover image was completely unreal, go have a look, and anyway I notice a little piece about something called Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
Seems they’re making a movie based on those characters, chronologically set 2 years after the end of the game. This won’t be a theatrical release but will go straight to DVD. My only reaction to that was AWESOME. I mean this is basically what I originally wanted to see when I watched Final Fantasy: Spirit Within. This is going to be huge, and that’s before I even got to see the trailer. Seems I’m well behind on this news as there’s several sites that have popped up to cover this massive event. It’s a massive event because FF7 is still Squaresoft’s best selling title ever. My magic eight ball tells me this movie is going to be huge.
Honestly I can’t wait to see this movie.
Related Links: http://www.adventchildren.net http://www.square-enix.co.jp/dvd/ff7ac
I’ve not read an Alan Moore book in a very very long time. Too long by my standards. I went through a massive Alan Moore phase 6 months back. Would buy something that had just come back into print every week, but I kinda wanted a bit of a breather. Not because Alan Moore got too much for me, but because I usually give a lot of attention to Alan Moore. His works work on soo many layers, and are really clever works, that you have to go back and digest and try and understand and discover. You won’t get everything the man’s trying to get across to you on your first pass in one of his stories. Even on a shit day Alan Moore writes circles around 95% of ‘writers’ working in comics today.
I guess that’s what I really love about the man in that he’s actually giving you value for what you’re buying, and ultimately he’s smarter than you. Yes I’m looking at you. Or at least it seems that way. Whatever topic he’s choosen to write about, it always seems as though he’s an expert in that field. Well it does to me at least. You can attribute that to a lot of research etc, but Alan Moore doesn’t do Computers. He doesn’t have a website, and he still faxes things through to his artists.
Anyway, Smax the Barbarian shows a rare side of Alan Moore. The humourous side. The flavour of the absolutely amazing and superb Top Ten is still apparent. It’s as if he didn’t miss any clicks between the long time since he last touched these characters. Smax the Barbarian has a lot more in common with Terry Pratchett than Lord of the Rings, so don’t be coming into this story looking for the serious. Oh sure there are serious moments but they don’t occupy centre stage.
The story focuses on Jeff Smax and Robyn going off to Jeff’s homeworld, for the funeral of Jeff’s uncle. Think of this line as the opening sequence of a Simpson’s episode, it’s just a vehicle for a different story entirely. Turns out it’s a bit of a fantasy world, and that’s when the fun starts, as Jeff’s past starts comig back to bite him on the ass, and the real reason why he left his homeworld in the first place start coming through.
I loved Jeff’s lines. He never really talked in the earlier series Top Ten, and it’s apparent in this series the reason behind that. He’s not the sharpest pencil in the box, and that quality makes him a lot more likable. His singing sword is genius as well. This is a Smax story. You get his origin told, it’s centered around his world, and the people in it. Rexa is a good character addition to the Top Ten mythos.
Cannon Zander takes on the artistic chores. No offense to the man but he’s no Gene Ha. Cannon was the original breakdown artist for Top Ten, but it’s apparent that the real star of that show was Gene. The artwork works well with the story I guess, but the characters weren’t as expressive as I’d have liked them to be, and the character designs weren’t that spectacular. I guess the artwork didn’t really captivate me, it told the story competently, which I guess is always a good thing.
Would I want to see more Smax? Not really, I think this series said everything there is to say about the character, and I mean that in a good way. It gives you a really fun adventure, full of clever little twists and lots of chuckles. Having said that there is an absolute mountain, literally of characters in the Top Ten arsenal, and it’s nice to see that some of them are going to shown in the upcoming Graphic Novel The 49ers.
The verdict is Alan Moore never disappoints. Ever; however this is a much lighter affair, that will make you smile, and is just a really well put together mini-series and ultimately it’s fun.
The story was initially released as a 5 issue mini series. It’s now collected in hardcover format, although I’m sure if you wait a little while ABC/Wildstorm will bring out the softcover version. The hardcover as is standard with the ABC collections doesn’t have much in the way of extras etc. (Yeah like the couple of sketches in the original HC really counts, they’ve been sorely lacking in recent collections).
This is going to be a pretty large one people as I’ve spent the past 4 days trying to get this to all work nicely together. As you’ll notice Broken Kode has now got a new front page, as I mentioned a little while back. This is about why, how and what I’ve learnt in the process.
All of Broken Kode’s previous derivatives have always been a one column job. Always. The reasoning behind this is pretty simple really, when the site started I only wanted a simple way to update the news section of the site. Using Blogger this was as easy as pie. Needless to say that just quickly spiralled into the wonderful world of CSS and Weblogs as I began to use the feature for a whole lot more.
Now believe it or not Manji is actually the second FULL CSS site design I ever attempt. All previous attempts had css sure but none of them except what I call version 1.0 had css structure in place. The more I got into it the more I realised the full potential of the language.
I downloaded the excellent plugin BAStats which is running on this site right now. The significance of the plugin is two fold. First of all it lets me see what is being read and by how many, but it also tells me what people are searching for, both on google and locally, and that is the main driver behind the two column index page. I get over 1000 local searches a day retaining to shuttle and manji. Erm guys it’s right up there at the top.
Which is why I decided to make them a little more prominent. The second reason was due to the number of completely different people coming to the site, seems Broken Kode is coming up higher in specific searches for the topics I cover. So I take these things a bit seriously and rather than have people come to the site for some seriously unrelated rubbish, I’d like for them to come and get some semblance of information, opinion or whatever. If they want to know what the deal is about this site at a glance I’ve included a tiny description with a bit of my character right there on the index page.
I’ve tried to keep additional items on the side to a minimum, but what you’ll notice is the fact that I don’t have complete posts on the front page anymore. Reason behind that is again very simple, as the focus of this site changes slightly so too should the design. I’m not in the habit of finding great links on the internet before everyone and telling them about it. I write about things. I write long posts, like articles. They might not be the greatest things in the world, but one has to try and try again before they can get better. The way I write now is ultimately much more different to the way I used to write a year ago, and hopefully in a year’s time it will be better than now.
Logo Design. I’m sure I’ll keep tweaking it till I’ve got it exactly the way I want it. It’s a start and been in my head for a while now. Something simple and yet gives this site an identity.
This design also showcases the Iliosnare logo for the first time. Basically this is to get me to actually start doing something with regards to my showcase site. My online portfolio. That will be a reminder for me that I’ve not done that yet. Iliosnare will be 85% Flash with a bit of WordPress and CSS stuck in there for good measure. As much as I love CSS and XHTML, I love Flash and all it’s infinite possibilities. I’m not constrained to much with Flash, and it’s a joy to use.
In trying to solve a few design issues I had to delve deeper and deeper into the world of web design and CSS. There really is an immense amount of information out there, and as it seems there are some key players that set the standard for all of us out there. Some worthwhile resources include the following sites:
Designers Toolbox - Absolutely one of the best resources on the net. I’m going to be downloading EVERYTHING that they offer whether I use it or not, because it’s such a fantastic resources of information. Somethings I’m going to be trying out simply because now I know how.
Oh yeah and I HATE INTERNET FUCKING EXPLORER. Please! Please! Please! stop using that pile of shit browser. It’s really pretty bad. It kills my site (and many others) for no reason other than it feels like it. I’ve spent like 3 days trying to sort out bugs that come up in IE. There are alternatives people, much better alternatives. I’ve even written about them. Go, have a look. Just wanted to thank Joshua who came to my rescue again, as I was slowly going insane trying to sort out these bloody IE bugs. Thanks buddy I owe you big time.
I had a pretty quiet moment of clarity yesterday as I finally understood something that had been bugging up my design for 2 days, and it was then that I understood something Joshua said to me. We were talking about Shuttle, and he asked me how I was going to handle compromise. I replied that there shouldn’t be any problem at all, it’s an honour working with everyone on the team. It only occurred to me how quickly Joshua sussed me out though e-mail and MSN conversations. That I’m a stubborn bastard when it comes to my work. He realised this by the way I was adamant about how I wanted to skin Manji2. The good news is that I’ve seen the light and will be sorting that code out in a big way in the coming weeks. The beta phase is over. I like to do this before I release a theme because I get to see what works and what doesn’t. See people’s reactions etc.
Manji2 will get a bit of a rebranding as well, in terms of colour to distinguish it slightly.
What a fantastic day. Went on a course today called ‘Communicating Design’ and it’s emphasis was on how we as engineers could basically better communicate our designs to each other, architects, clients, everybody. It’s the first workshop I’ve been on like this in a good long while. The great thing about it is that I was able to actually get a lot of drawing done and that freedom was astounding. I absolutely relished the opportunity to actually draw freely during my peak productivity time.
Let me elaborate on that. I’m a morning person. During the brighter months of the year I’ll get around 5 hours of sleep and the rest of the day I’ll be active as I can, to get as much done in the day as possible. My best hours as a morning person, is the morning. I know I’m being profound today. Unfortunately I don’t get that chance during the day because I’m at work, and so I’ve really had to try and change my style in the last few years to accomodate for my passions in the morning and in the evening.
It was such a laid back course and ultimately I had a lot of fun on it. It’s rare for me to actually say that, but honestly I really did enjoy it. What was great I guess was being away from the computer for a day, talking with people I haven’t seen in a while, and new people I met. And I guess being away from my desk did me an absolute world of good as well.
Last week I bought the Firefly box set. This was an actual impulse buy. My housemate at University, 3 1/2 years ago now, was heavily into Buffy at the time. I couldn’t get into it for the life of me. The reasons where very simple, I couldn’t get into the whole concept, and Buffy herself was a complete and utter bitch. Anyway at the time I was heavily into Babylon 5 (still am, long post about that some other time). So I’ve heard of Joss Whedon. Hell I’m a comic book fan so I know the man is a fan as well, and that Buffy was essentially his version of the X-men, funny since he was apparently going to direct the next X-men instalment, and he’s writing X-men for the next year as well. Anyway, back to Firefly.
Firefly for those in the dark about these things is Joss Whedon’s third television series. After Buffy and Angel, he came up with this Sci-Fi Western. It aired for 11 episodes, even though 14 were made, and much like the great Clerks Animated Series it got yanked off the air before it could find it’s audience. Fox does seem to like to fuck around with what’s good, much like removing Futurama. So we have this box set which includes 4 DVDs and has all 14 episodes including the unaired ones.
There’s a lot to like about this series. For a start it’s a new Sci-Fi series, which I’m always on the lookout for. The computer technology has improved by leaps and bounds since the early days of Bablyon 5. What I didn’t realise was that this series takes the tired and tried Sci-fi genre and turns it around. See while this series is set 500 years in the future, the landscape out there is so dispersed, that it all reminds you of the Wild West. An interesting concept and one I thought really couldn’t work, but it does, really well.
The story follows a freelance shipping crew on board the Firefly-class spaceship. Having said that they’re not just shipping stuff, they sometimes smuggle stuff. And when I say stuff, the actual merchandise could be anything.
One of the main things that this type of series usually struggles with is finding actors to pull off the lines and the scenes convincingly. I’m glad to report that so far in the episodes I’ve watched the cheesy rubbish has been kept to a minimum and the hammy acting has not surfaced yet.
The characters for me are brilliant. It didn’t take me long to find my favourite. Without a doubt it’s Kaylee. For a start I think she’s really cute, and secondly she’s a very sweet character and they’ve given her enough quirks for me to actually care about her. I really love that she takes it personally when someone doesn’t respect her ship. I also like River. The actress Summer Glau does a great job of playing the messed up character.
In the pilot, I really liked Captain Mal only in the beginning. However after watching a few more episodes, I’m really starting to warm up to him. I’m starting to like his attitude to certain things, because originally I didn’t like how he treated everyone around him, but he slowly grows on you, not instantly mind you but eventually.
My favourite scene so far has been an episode where the crew is interrogated, Zoe and Wash (wife and husband), basically get asked the same question, ‘Do you love each other?’ The answers that each give are brilliantly executed and real. What you think I’d ruin it for you?
Now what’s impressed me the most is the sound. Seriously, from the music to the sound effects. What I love the most is that ‘Serenity’ doesn’t have any sound in space, because well that’s how it would be; No thrusters, or burners giving off noise, no laser sounds in space, nothing. The writers have obviously done their research since the spaceship does have a rotating component to simulate the gravity inside the actual spaceship, a nice little nod to Babylon 5 there, wouldn’t have known that little fact. It’s not explained in the series, but people like me would find fault in the series if it didn’t exist.
One concept I can’t really understand is the idea of how Companions have gotten such an elevate status. Just don’t really understand the thinking behind how we got to this location. Inara is played by the really stunning Morena Baccarin, but somehow I still prefer Kaylee because of her next door demeanour.
The good news people is that if you ever get a chance to see this excellent series there’s more to come. Currently we’ve got Serenity the movie coming to a movie theatre near you, sometime towards the end of the year. See that’s really good. Since it started life as a television series but all the actors etc are coming back for more but this time on a much larger scale. Personally I can’t wait to get into this series more and then see all the extras, hopefully they’ll make many more instalments because I’m hooked, and I think if you give this series a shot you could get hooked as well.
I’ve literally wasted 2 evening on trying to sort out my bloody update to the site. I was only intending it to be a slight tweak. Spent yesterday trying to work out how to make navigation bars in CSS lists,…the way I wanted. See that’s the crux of it. I have a navigation list but the way I’ve got it in my mind, it shouldn’t have been too difficult to implement. Unfortunately you factor in the difference between IE and Firefox and you’ve got a whole world of pain.
What’s worse is that after I finally got it to work, I remembered a fundamental flaw in the design, which has effectively scuppered all the work this evening, with the exception of those lists. Dammit I’m not even updating anything major here, just the index page. Guess I must be having an off couple of days right now. Not really in the mood, even though it’s been snowing in London and I’ve had a great productive weekend.
I guess at times like these it’s best to step away from the computer and come back to it in a couple of days when I’ve got my head sorted.
Right after University I spent a few months learning how to draw faces. I spent the better part of 3 months drawing portraits of my friends to understand exactly what the structure of a face is. From this little exercise I even got one of these drawing up in the Hype Gallery last year which was both one of the best experiences and worst experiences of my life. I’ve learnt a few things since then, 3 1/2 years. This is the first in a new series of portraits.
Well, I know I said I was going to actually stay away from the net for 2 whole days. I couldn’t do it. I had to check my e-mails. I had to see everything was ok on the net. Strange nothing really much to report, a couple of cool pictures from the WonderCon convention, but apart from that no really major things happened.
In the time period I stepped away from the net:
<li>I completed 3 digital illustrations (which effectively makes me down by 1 drawing to be on schedule with my new year's resolution of 1 illustration a week).</li>
<li>Would you believe I actually got some more writing down. I've even got a clear path of how to go about this writing business. Let's see if I can keep it up.</li>
<li>Worked up a mockup both on paper first, then in Photoshop of how the new index file fo BK is going to be. I'm really happy with the changes. Oh sure it's a bit of a departure, but to be honest once I explain my reasoning everything will become clear. I've made sure that everything is there for a reason, so nothing really takes away from the 'content'.</li>
<li>Started character drawing for the Iliosnare website. See this actually depressed me, because it showed me that I'd forgotten how to draw basic anatomy. There are several rules, that once you've mastered them you're away, and I'm so rusty I completely forgot some of the basic ones, which ended up me having a complete potatoe for an arm. So I whipped out my Hogarth books again and started rereading things. Which basically means I've got to get back into drawing by hand so as to not get rusty and forget things. 2 hours a day I think should about do it.</li>
<li>Watched the first episode of <a href="http://browncoats.serenitymovie.com/serenity/">Joss Whedon's Firefly</a>. I'll definitely have a nice review up for that shortly because I've been looking for a good sci-fi series to get into. For me Babylon 5 is the king of Sci-fi series for TV. I got Series 4 on DVD yesterday, I know lame as Series 5 has already been released. The thing is though, this is my absolute favourite series of all as well. So many good twists in the story. Watched the first episode of that as well.</li>
<li>Read half of the <strong>Little Prince</strong>. Good book so far. Try and finish it off today sometime, and I'll write a bit about that as well.</li>
So the moral of the story kids, is that if you want to get things done, turn off the Net. It’s depressing, but I am addicted to it. Couldn’t even step away for 2 days. I’m going to try and reduce my net time to a specific time allocation every day, like in the days of 56k modems. I might actually get things done that way.
I know this is old news to some people within the creative community, but for all those that don’t know about this, Epson are doing a promotion for their new printing technologies. The deal is you register and then send them a CD with whatever you want printed out. They then print it out on whatever paper YOU choose and send it back to you in a lovely rolled up tube, no charge.
The quality is seriously amazing. What makes me wonder however is how come they ask for RGB files, and can reproduce the bloody things perfectly!!!! I’m still wondering about that to be honest, how the hell are they configuring their bloody printers. I’ve had so much hassle in the past converting things to CMYK that I’m having a real hard time accepting this printing process of theirs.
Anyway if you’re a UK resident then go to the official promotion page http://www.epson.co.uk/4000sample/. The only bad thing is that it’s limited to one per house hold. Still though, get them sent to you’re friend’s houses.
Only reason I’m mentioning it now is because I just got my second print thanks to Ana. Dudette you rock.
I don’t watch TV, but I’m pretty much glued to the damn internet. It’s a curse to have broadband because you’re always connected. I’ve been thinking about my list of never ending things to do and the more I think about it the more I think about why it’s taking so long. The reason can be attributed to the net. It sucks soo much time out of me that I’ve not actually had the chance to just sit down and do the work.
I’m therefore going to try something novel this weekend. Radio silence for 2 days. I’m going to unplug my computer and I’m going to work on Sublime and my drawings and my designing. I’m not going to get online for cheeky updates of this site or the other. I’m not going to check my e-mails till after the 24 hours are complete, and I’m going to see just how much I’ll have gotten done. It’ll be an interesting experiment to be honest.
So as of tomorrow, I turn off the net.
For me the Pumpkins are a way of life. 10 years ago I bought Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and it’s easy to say that my life changed from that day. Yes I’d heard of the Smashing Pumpkins before that, in fact I’d seen the ‘Today’ video clip waay before then, but I was in a techno phase at the time and too damn busy listening to the likes of West Bam to really care.
I remember the day I bought Mellon Collie. I was 15 at the time. My money was obviously limited, and in my mind I reconned that a double album that was priced only slightly higher than that other album I was eyeing would undoubtedly give me more value for money. I mean ok so I liked one song on Mellon Collie, but I mean this beast of an album had 28 songs. The laws of statistics were on my side. Without a doubt the most important musical purchase of my life. The kind of buy I can think back on 10 years later and laugh to myself about how the mind of a teenager works and just what kind of impact subtle decisions have for the rest of your immediate life.
There was a time when I would listen to something by them every single day. Without fail. Without even thinking about it. It’s not so much that the music has been played to death for me, but every single time I listen to these albums I just can’t help but remember my school days, and my University days and it all just seems like such a long time ago for me.
I own just about every single cd I have ever come across that’s got the pumpkins name on it. It’s really rare for me to be so sure that I’ll enjoy a cd even before I’ve heard the actual thing. That is how good they were to me. No artist will ever reach that status I doubt.
I’ve been listening to the greatest hits album today, and the more I listen to that album the more I appreciate the amount of passion and reality those songs have in them. Honestly it’s been too long that I’ve felt like that about a new album. Oh sure there are other bands or artists that I follow with a passion, however it’s not too much of a stretch to actually say that none will ever reach the intensity of the pumpkins for me.
Their music inspired me in ways I can’t even begin to describe, and their impact on my creative work is always present. It’s soo rare for a musician to really touch me on all levels and inspire me. Billy Corgan seems to do it every time. What I love about the man is that he’s always willing to experiment with his web presence as well. Smashing Pumpkins dot Com (offline now since the Pumpkins broke up) was always a model of web excellence. That website was innovating with flash back when everyone was still in 56k modem diapers and Broadband was a distant dream.
I guess I’m lucky that I’m getting nostalgic around this time since he coming out with his solo album very soon, in fact sometime this spring apparently.
This kind of brings up my original idea to design the covers to the 4 lps that were released for the internet ONLY. Friends and Enemies of Modern Music was released in 2001 on the internet, 9 months before the band broke up. It’s raw, it’s scratchy, it’s completely underproduced, but it’s also brilliant at the same time.
I’m in the process of designing my own cover to this seminal work as it’s been in my mind since it came out. Yeah the site is going to get a bit of a beating with the high res images I’m thinking.
If you’ve not heard this essentially 2 CD collection I seriously recommend you do that.
If you want to read more about the album, go read the FAQ.
Other links of interest: Starla.org Smashing Pumpkins Fan Collaborative bCorgan.com
I’ve been giving this all some serious thought and I think I’ll be changing the index page to BK in the near future. I guess it’s due to a shift in how I want to present my posts. Some of my posts I feel are articles that take me hours to craft and I’d ideally like to get into a bit more of a routine about covering certain topics. I’m not touching the individual posts pages as I actually really like those, I’m just going to try and tweak the index page. It’s probably going to have more in common with Pixelsurgeon or Crown Dozen, than a typical blog, but I guess that’s where my thoughts are heading right now.
I guess what I want to do is get that fun feeling I was originally aiming for when I designed CoCo. There are certain features that really don’t fit into the current design, that I think are very important. I promised myself I wouldn’t get into the whole redesigning of BK for a very long while, but I just can’t help it. It’s a sickness, that your website is NEVER complete. It’s NEVER the way you want it. There’s always something you can do. What’s worse is by the time you’ve finished designing the thing, you’re already saturated by it ^_^.
First things first however, Shuttle and Iliosnare are my priorities right now, and the minor tweaks I’m doing on Manji.
I want to thank the WordPress Dev Team for all the hard work they’ve all put into the latest iteration of the system. Thank you Ladies and Gents for all your efforts. I’ve personally been using it for a while now (since October probably) so I’ve been using all these little additions. When I do one of my open source reviews on WordPress 1.5 I’ll cover all these features in as much detail as I possibly can.
El Hariri died today. The ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon was assasinated today. When I found out this afternoon I was in complete and utter shock. I seriously didn’t know what to say or do with myself. You’d think I wouldn’t care about a politician. This is different though. It’s different because it means a number of things for my country. In my eyes a number of bad things.
This has seriously upset me, as I’m sure it has a number of other Lebanese the world over, and it’s done so for a number of reasons. For me Rafik El Hariri was the first Lebanese politician I actually knew anything about. I guess the reason behind that was because he was the first Prime I became aware of after the war. My dad knew him as they were both raised in the same neighbourhood in the small city where I was also born, the city of Saida. As a ‘child of the town’ as we’re called in Lebanon, my dad obviously liked him regardless of what actions he took and what situations he got into as Prime Minister of the country. My mum was more sceptical at times and angry at other times.
However undeniably the thing that every single Lebanese person will agree on right now , is that his death is ultimately a very bad thing for country. The reason is we don’t really have a simalar figure like him, which his strength of character. Whether you liked him or not, one thing was very clear, he was the main person responsible for bringing Lebanon back on the map. Bringing it back to a place of acceptance. Instrumental in it’s rebuilding. Apparently and I wish I could remember who told me this story, but during the 80s, during the war, various consultancies in New York (I work for a consultancy) were commisioned to do some work. When asked what they were doing, they replied ‘On rebuilding downtown Beruit’. They were commissioned by Rafik.
He was responsible for putting over 20, 000 students through school and University (4 of my cousins are part of that list).
Oh don’t get me wrong I know the man wasn’t a saint. I can fully appreciate that his intentions weren’t always pure. I know he made mistakes. However he won’t be remembered for his mistakes. He’ll be remembered for what he brought to the country of Lebanon and he’ll be remembered for being assasinated.
May brings about the elections. I’m 25 years old and I’ve never voted. I think I know when my next trip to Lebanon will be.
Rest in peace.
In case you’ve missed it there has been some talk around a WordPress manual as proposed by Larry Ayers. This would be a manual of sorts to help out the newcomer etc. Seems that Larry has contacted Matt about this and there wasn’t any else doing something similar, soo Larry thought it best to get going.
Problem is Larry is tackling a subject that Podz, Craig and Carthik (to name only a small few) have been slogging away at for the past year to the best of my knowledge. In that time they’ve amassed an emmense amount of posts on the support forums, have kept the wiki alive and hammered away at the Codex as well. In all that time the guys haven’t been paid anything, and in Podz’s case actually taken a serious hit to make his manuals available online.
I’ve said this before several times, that the only reason I chose WordPress over Textpattern was the community that was built around it. Without this community and the fact that everyone is helping out in ways they think is best, I might as well go to B2evolution or any one of the other open-source alternatives. The number of templates and plugins available for WordPress probably dwarf those of other blogging softwares. All of that work was done by the community, for the community.
When I released Manji, I was wondering how Chris was counting the number of downloads, so I sent him and e-mail and asked him. He sent me the plugin, the php script and a walk through of how to bloody implement the thing. That is what the community is about. I wanted to get my links to have alternate colours, Joshua spent 30 minutes hacking some code for me just so that I can do something like that.
I’ve learnt an emmense amount about CSS, HTML and PHP in the past year through the use of WordPress. Hell I don’t need Dreamweaver to do my code anymore, I just use notepad++. The main strength of WordPress over everyone else for me at least is the community. Oh sure the software is good but there are derivatives out there.
So with that out of the way, what does any of this have anything to do with Larry and his book? How does Podz fit into all of this? There are several points I think that need to be raised here.
The first problem was how you approached the situation. Not very diplomatic and it did show a lack of knowledge of the community. Podz is one of the developers of WordPress. He’s got over 2500 posts on the forums. This is what you wrote to podz:
The point is if you’re going to write a book, the only book about WordPress surely you should know the history of the software, and who the key people involved are.
Larry, you’re an unknown entity. We’ve seen none of your previous work. You’ve been involved with other online sources? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, show me. Give me links to the forums you’ve posted on, the places you’ve left your mark on. The fear here is that you’re not what you say you are. Podz has shown time and time again what he’s capable of in terms of documentation and helping people out. At least for the WP community.
Personally I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch for Podz to think ‘well this guy hasn’t done anything similar that I can see, he’s interested in writing a book on a subject that’s taken me and another x people 1 year to compile information on. Hang on a minute why should I believe he’s saying the truth and that he’s going to be approaching the subject from a fresh plate. He’s got a wealth of information at his fingertips, my information, and he’s proposing on making money off it.’
And you see that in a way goes against the grain of the WordPress community. If you’d taken the time to research the subject you’d have known who Podz is. You could have easily dropped him a line telling him that you’re thinking it would be a good idea to do this. You’ve got the time to devote to this and the contacts. You understand that Podz has devoted soo long on the help forums and the codex and the wiki and his manuals, ask him if he’d like to join you. Having one of the dev team on your side really works wonders for the people who would buy your book. You’d be surprised how many hours people devote to bettering WordPress every day.
It’s a community, where the final product is a lot more important than the individual ego. Perfect example is Shuttle. 3 designers, 3 coders (Matt is over seeing what we’re doing). One goal. Better the software and enhance blogging in general.
It would take a lot longer than 1 week to find out what most users aren’t capable of doing or understanding. It would take a lot longer than 1 week to find out what the most common problems are. It would take a lot longer than 1 week to go through the 450 plugins that are available and constantly being updated for the WordPress software. Podz has spent the past 8 months learning these things, which is why he made the manuals in the first place. To stop answering the same question again and again.
By the time you’ve finished your book, we’ll have just released Shuttle. You going to put the logo in the book as well? What if we decide to call the final thing something else?
Larry it’s a matter of perspective. You say you’ve done this before. I think having someone who’s done this before is great, and I would be the first to appologise to you for ever doubting your PHP Fu skills. Unfortunately I’ve seen NOTHING that proves the contrary to this. I’ve currently only got your word to go on, and since I don’t know you, it’s not a very strong word.
Welcome to the WordPress community ^_^.
Picture the scene, 2000 chinese and me. That was the scene last night, as we descended on Elephant and Castle for the Chinese New Years Party. It’s pretty funny, Sylvane apparently wasn’t ‘feeling’ 100% so he declined to go and Amone decided not to come ‘because she was broke’, so as the night unravelled, it was a party of 6 chinese and me, going to a the most packed Chinese party of the year.
I’ve never seen soo many Chinese people concentrated in one place in my life. It was a whole new experience for me, as before coming to London 2.5 years ago my chinese friends were very limited in number. This was a pretty cool experience, which means I can handle Hong Kong (and China in general) in the future.
Man, there were some seriously CRAZY hairstyles in there. We’re talking the kind of hairstyles that I spent about 2 minutes trying to UNDERSTAND, then I spent a few minutes thinking how the hell you’d explain something like that to your hairdresser, then how you’d make it look the same the next day after you’d washed it. I wish I had a camera in my eyes, taking snap shots because the haircut I’m talking about, damn I’d struggle defining it, so it’d be much easier to show you, but obviously I don’t have a picture.
What’s cool is that tomorrow I’ll be going to the street parade with the traditional dress, and dragons and fireworks and whatever down in central london. One of the good things that came out of the night is that Gladys owes me an apple pie; mental note Jackie better help her out because I don’t trust Gladys to cook a cheese toasty ^_^.
Easily my favourite and most used application. What’s Firefox? I’m always surprised when people still look at me with a blank stare when I mention Firefox, but I guess you’ve got to be a heavy internet user to know or even care about these things. Most people I know don’t even realise that there are alternatives to Internet Explorer. Microsoft have done their job well in making it all seem that they won the browser war and that there really is only one way to surf the web. Oh but that’s not true. Nothing could be further from the truth. Enter Firefox by the Mozilla Foundation.
There’s a fantastic article on that tells the story behind Firefox and it’s co-creator, Blake Ross. For me Firefox opened my eyes to the world of Open Source code, and what a wonderful thing a community building software can actually be. So let’s get down to why I think Firefox is what you should be using to browse and surf the world wide web.
Features No Pop-ups This has been updated for Windows Service Pack 2, however this wasn’t the case before, and Firefox hit that little annoying thing of multiple pop-ups and what not on the head. It’s a simple thing, but essential to browsing, even trusted sites such as www.comicbookresources.com will be prone to using these annoying things. Job done with Firefox, no more of these things.
Tabbed Web Browsing Ah, I can’t live without this feature. Simple idea, but one of the best things about the program. Check out the picture below. Rather than opening 15 IE windows, they’re all housed neatly in one window and I can click quickly to whatever page I want to, without any problems whatsoever.
Password Manager Everything is housed here. All my passwords tucked away safely. I can control which sites I don’t want it to have the passwords, while others I’ll let it have them in there. Full control, which is essential to my usage of something as sensitive as this.
Themes Soo many to choose from. I’ve currently got about 10 downloaded, although I’m using Plastikfox Crystal since it’s a very colourful theme. If you want it to look like an Apple application you’ve got that option as well, and a plethora of other really well put together themes as well.
Bookmarks Manager Such a nice way of moving things up and down, add separators, but them in folders, all from any view you want. Either while it’s as a sidebar, or from it’s own window manager area. I remember the days of IE where I would HAVE to go to the special bookmarks window and sorting them out was not very simple.
Extensions One of the things that makes Firefox so powerful is the fact that there is a massive community out there, make extensions to better the functionality of the core code. What this brings is an absolutely EMMENSE amount of extensions that cater to just about every single need you might have, to customise this browser to whatever you want it to do. These are just the extensions I use on a regular basis. Going to the extensions library shows you just how small a slither these one are, but just to get you started here’s a couple:
Web Development When designing and testing a website, this extension is something I can’t do without. It’s simple it’s effective and gives me a much better appreciation of the design of the website. It’s got everything from div highlights, size of the actual divs, CSS markup, names the images, and oh so much more. I’ve not even scratched the surface of all the features but it’s a very powerful addition to anyone playing around with web design in any capacity. Download Web Developer extension here.
AdBlock Simple idea, as with most things in Firefox. Go around to all your favourite websites. Chances are there are ads. Don’t like them? Fine, right click, BLOCK AD. Oh look at that the ad’s disappeared. Continue to a few more websites, by the end of the week, any website you visit won’t have any ads since they come from roughly the same place. Hell it even takes care of the Flash ads if you really want! Details can be found here.
Gmail Notifier Well for those in the dark, Gmail, is Google’s e-mail service. It’s got a massive 1G storage space capacity, so seriously you never need to bloody delete any e-mails, ever. It looks ugly as sin, but hey it makes sending e-mail more fun. This little extension sits at the top next to everything else and once you’ve clicked it and logged in, will basically act as your watchdog for any new mail you might receive. Download Gmail notifier here.
Sage RSS reader My most used extension. RSS is a system where this little application will check all your favourite websites and see if they’ve updated since the last time that you visited. Not all websites have and RSS feed, however it’s something that is slowly but surely getting picked up by the major websites more and more. Again it’s fully customisable as with all other managers in Firefox. Download the Sage extension here.
Scrapbook This is a fantastic extension. I stumbled on it via Scripty Goddess. What we have here is a truly useful little addition, where if you find a particular page with content you’d like to keep, like online receipts, embedded quicktime movies etc, all you have to do is right click ‘Capture page’ and it simply saves the entire page AS IT IS onto a designated area on your hard disc. It then catalogues it and you get to sort everything out as the bookmark manager. I can’t live without this addition now, as I’ve collected some serious internet gems because of this. Download the Scrapbook extension here.
ColorZilla Trust me I hate spelling it that way, but anyway. This little addition sits in the bottom left hand corner of your browser. If you see a colour on screen you’d like the details of click and point the crosshair on the colour and bam you’ve got the exact colour details. Download it here.
Rating: 6/5. That’s how highly I rate this application.
Pros - So many. Apart from all the things I mentioned above, add that the development on this is constant and ongoing. It’s not like IE which hasn’t been updated in a few years. It’s completely compliant with Web Standards. The extensions keep coming from the community and are keep getting better and better. It’s got a great icon and it’s all COMPLETELY free. What’s not to like?
Cons - Trying hard to think of what I don’t like about Firefox. My only thought is the fact that it can’t search text fields. Having said that I can live with that. Honestly I really can.
Oh dear, that’s really not good. Podzy seems to be a bit unhappy about what’s going on with people using his guides to make money. Podz has spends HOURS on the forums helping people out whenever he can. He’s also responsible for both writing up and hosting the WP guides, which for many people (myself included) have been an invaluable resourse of information. I just tried to access the things, and got my IP banned as he’s password protected the guides. For example when I was moving my host over the guy (and macmanx) both came to reassure me that everything was going to be ok, and that I wasn’t going to loose all my posts.
As far as I can tell a certain Larry on the forums said he was going to make a WordPress manual, which he was going to write from scratch. Yeah well if you need information about the ins and outs of WordPress you either check the Codex or the Forums or the Manuals. Guess who’s name comes across the board on all these things? Yup Podz. So understandably the man is a bit miffed, that’s not how this particular community has worked so far.
So it took me all of 10 seconds, seriously, to offer to help out Podz make an offical book of sorts using his pages already. It would be a long hard road, but one that’s ultimately pretty gratifying. Ahh, but I’m not a publisher you say? No, I’m not but I’ve got CafePress at my fingertips if I want. He’s decided not to help anymore, which seems a bit rash, hopefully he’ll reconsider. My offer to pull the book together still stands, he can sort out the content of the book and the cafepress site ^_^.
What’s CafePress you ask? Well it’s a way for anyone to set up a store online selling personalised merchandise revolving around whatever it is they’re website is about. This has beenmainly T-shirts, mugs, etc. Recently (i.e 8 months ago) they added books in there as well. They come in a different range of bindings (saddle-stitch, ring binder and perfect bound), have a flat rate per type and then additional cost per page. Soo the idea is you have to price a 100 page perfect bound book at $10, because that’s how much they’re charging, and then you add whatever you want as a mark-up.
I’ve toyed around with the idea a lot, but it only allows black and white content. That’s why I personally find it slightly limiting for my comic book work, however I might actually use it for a sketchbook. As time goes by I’m collecting more and more sketches.
Oh sure they’re not the cheapest thing in the world, and it’s not as easy to have a look at what you’re getting before you buy it, but it’s one method. In that thread I was pointed to another service, which seems like a good idea. It’s called BlogBinders and converts your blog into a book in the same 3 formats as provided by CafePress.
From my point of view, I think it would be great to collect my posts as a book for myself. Hey I might be online a lot but I’m a complete book junkie. I’ve only started thinking about this, but I’d need to edit everything to show the links in full, and I’d probably have to delete or not include a few of the earlier posts as they were pretty rubbish (or do I include them to see how rubbish they actually where?).
I’m surprised all the usual comic book websites haven’t picked this up. Usuaully they’re the first to pick this sort of thing up, soo what I’ll do is I’ll talk about it here and then I’ll send them an e-mail shouting and scolding them.
Seems there’s a company called Untamed Cinema that as you guessed it, makes movies. Their latest project is called Grayson, as in Dick Grayson AKA Robin or Nightwing depending on how involved you are with the Batman universe. Now I don’t know about rights of these things, I’ve known DC Comics characters being used in other ‘personal’ projects but this is pretty cool. So at best this is a bit of fun, that will never be released, still though…it’s pretty cool nevertheless.
So what’s the story. Seems the director maxed out 4 credit cards, got some friends along and made this extended preview. I guess he was trying to get this idea he had out of his head, and good for him. He’s really made a fantastic bit of film, that looks great, for the budget. That would be $18,000, give or take a few.
Oh sure it’s not the most perfect piece of film history, he does try and put a bit too much here, and shows absolutely every character that could fit into this story.
The story follows Dick Grayson as he searches for the murder of Bruce Wayne. For me the best part of the entire ‘movie’ was the Dick Grayson scenes. He’s done well here. It actually looks like an older Grayson. The appearance of Barbara is also very nice addition to the story. One thing they’ve tried to do, although not as successfully as I’d like but is completely understandable given the budget, is the acrobatic nature of Dick. It comes out every once in a while, but it’s just not enough.
It’s a 149meg download and requires quicktime, so be prepared.
There’s also a Pieces of the Puzzle documentary for download, which to be honest I found a hell of a lot more enjoyable than the actual piece itself. Finding out what this poor guy had to go through in order to achieve his vision is really a great story in and of itself. Highly recommend you download this as well.
Their website is packed with stuff for you to download, from the poster in hi res to the wallpaper.
[link via Chris diclerico]
How exactly did I miss this one, the second it came out? Go over to typographica and have a read of a pretty good interview with Rian Hughes, desigener, illustrator and typographer extrodinaire. I’ll be sure to check out that little catalogue they mention at the bottom.
I wish I could buy affordable prints by the man, the one’s I’ve seen are bloody expensive, but that’s the modern design world for you right there.
I’ve tweaked the Manji code very slightly, just a couple of minor things, I’ll put them in the change log on the preview site, which had something really stupid happen to it after the move. I’m still investigating to see what the problem was and restore everything back to normal.
The major difference is the addition of the HTML manual. This is just information culled from the FAQ and the download page so that you have it all in one handy file.
What I find the most satisfying aspect of the whole Manji experience is seeing how the code evolves over time, as I tweak a little here or there, add some functionality, fix a bug. It’s been an excellent experience so far.
And no before anyone starts cracking some joke, we’re not letting EVERYONE join the Shuttle team but I mean c’mon, HOW could you possibly say no to Joen? ^_^.
What’s funny is that in our little research posts, people who have commented have actually linked back to Joen’s site where he’s talked about this extensively, from a design POV. Michael got talking to Joen, one thing led to another and here we are.
There are 6 people involved in this project now. Yes, 6. We’ve got 3 designers, 2 coders and Matt Mullenweg will also be looking over our shoulders making sure we don’t go completely mental, and pointing out why we shouldn’t be doing something, or going down a particular route for whatever reason, which he might have learnt about the hard way.
We’re out to make WordPress a thing of undisputed beauty, in every possible way, both on the inside and the outside.
I can never remember my dreams. I know I dream, but it’ll be one of those things were I’ll remember something later on in the day but it won’t be in any real detail, and it’ll be a slight passing moment. I remember my nightmare though. I wake up and I know I’ve had a nightmare, and I know exactly what it was about. The only reason I’m saying this is because after my nightmare this morning, I knew exactly how my book was going to start off, and I know how many of the initial pieces are all going to fall into place.
It’s a turning point for me to be honest. February 2004 was the worst month of last year for a number of reasons. This February I was wary as you can expect, it hasn’t exactly started on the brightest of notes, what with me being bed ridden for 3 days, but creatively it’s looking like a pretty good one. Loads of things to get on with, just need to start structuring my time more accurately to hit them at more concise moments is all.
So I watched Kiki’s delivery service,…again. I guess Miyazaki’s movies are starting to replace my eternal crush on Amelie. Whenever I need to be inspired I always tend to gravitate towards the man’s work. The english translation leaves a lot to be desired from in certain areas, but nothing could take away from the magic of this classic. Think back to when Disney movies were actually good. Well this is better, because it’s not talking down to you in that it has to break out into a song. Don’t get me wrong nothing wrong with songs, but there was a time when Disney thought (still think I could give two monkey’s) that if it was animated it had to have a friggin singalong soundtrack to it.
Then the big ugly mouse comes out and say something as stupid as traditional cel animation is dead. Damn dawg, did anyone mention this to Miyazaki? The man creates worlds and characters that seem real even when they don’t look it. If you’re a creative soul, in any sense of the world really, you owe it to yourself to reach out and experience Miyazaki. I guarantee you’ll come back for more, whenever you need inspiration.
It was one of the things I on my new year’s resolution list, so this is the first in hopefully a long line of comic book reviews, or as I like to refer to them Graphic Novel reviews. The first to receive the proper treatment is The Technopriests.
Alexandro Jodorowsky is a creative genius. Now I don’t give such a title easily. In fact in terms of writing, the only other man to completely take my imagination away is a certain Alan Moore. The thing is though both these distinguished gentlemen approach sequential storytelling from COMPLETLY different angles.
Alexandro has a mad idea on every page, sometimes several mad ideas. At the same time he explores an enormous breadth of topics in which his stories are based,…and they’re all well developed worlds where his character live.
The Technopriests is based in the same Universe as The Incal and Saga of the Metabarons. With Saga of the Metabarons his approach was to instil drama into the work. A sense of serious sci-fi in the air. Obviously so as to not make it too serious he put 2 robots who tell the story (I’ll stop talking about SOTM, I need to leave something for that instalment); in The Technopriests he utilises a similar method of story telling. Except this is a digital autobiography, by the main character Albino and his sidekick rodent Tinigrifi.
It’s Albino’s story and how he gets to be like the moses, however the twist is he’s leading 300,000 technopriests to a galaxy where healthy human relationships are valued more the scientific achievement.
The Good. The setting is amazing. He’s created a world, very far in the future to ours, and he’s extrapolated certain aspects of our lives and blown them up to great degrees. Within the story he offers social commentary that point fingers at people now. However I feel that Jodo is best at when he’s describing:
Trust me absolutely not even a hint of a spoiler there. What makes this work special is just how much happens in the space of 150 pages. It’s the scope of the work and rather than what is going to happen, you’re always wondering, how the hell is that going to happen. This is a trademark Jodo trick. You think you know what’s coming around the corner because he’s put you in that situation, then he pulls the rug from under you.
The Bad. The thing about Jodo’s here is that at times he’s trying to make it a bit more fun, by way of the dialogue which sometimes comes off a bit wrong in my opinion. Sometimes the characters fall in love at first sight thus declaring their undying love etc and to be honest it just doesn’t ring true. To me that’s the only weakness of this story, I’d love to blame it on the translation, but I respect Justin Kelly as he was responsible for the immaculate translation on The White Lama (more on this fantastic series in the future for sure). No this is a story driven issue, which fits in with the style established with the earlier work The Incal.
The Artists: Zoran Janetov & Fred Beltran. In terms of artwork, these two men have done an amazing job elevating their previous collaborations. For me seeing all the creatures and planets and vehicles this man created was enough to earn him a great deal of respect from me. His work on Avant L’incal (Before the Incal) was less polished. This work shows some serious maturity in form, ranging from facial expressions to backgrounds to body language.
Format Originally this story was presented in 3 hardcover books, oversized. I wouldn’t trade my White Lama books for anything, and I’m buying the Metabarons books in French since that’s the only way I can get Juan Gimenez’s work at that scale. Having said that, 3 books for 10 quid (that’s roughly $15 since you guys don’t pay a lot of rubbish we have to pay for over here), it’s pretty good value for money. The paper is top notch. It’s slightly larger in format than your traditional comic book size. All 3 covers are reproduced at the back which again is a very nice addition, DC generally tend to screw this aspect up whenever they can. So I’ll be buying other Humanoid Books in this format without much fear in the future over production values, and would recommend it be adapted by other publishers as well.
On the web: DC Comics Humanoids Publishing
Okay as far as I can tell the migration from Dreamhost is nearly over. It’s been one of those mornings. What I thought was a database error in actual fact a new crazy feature of the latest ‘unstable’ iteration of wordpress. Oh well, live and learn I guess. There’s a post missing, and a few comments. I’ll add the comments after this post here, as far as I can tell the rest of the site is running smoothly, so now I can say I’m proudly hosted by Dreamhost.
I’ve not had time to really take in the actual admin panel yet, but it seems very intuative. Right need to go sort my self out, 2 days in bed obviously had it’s toll on me, from a boredom point of view.
I’m ill as a fart. Chicken soup, soft music to calm me, and lots of fluids. What a horrible night. Every bone in my body is aching. Every single muscle is on fire. I don’t wish this on anyone. All I want is for the weekend NOT to be a complete and utter waste of my time., sitting in bed is BLOODY boring, since I can’t concentrate on anything.
Just to clarify something, this “Shuttle” is NOT a fork. We’re not planning on releasing Shuttle as an alternative to Wordpress. It’s just something that can replace the existing Wordpress admin interface to be more asthetically pleasing. Are we going to add functionality? Well it kind of makes sense. Soo many things are available from the Wordpress community that people would love to use. Obviously we’ll only include things that we think are essential and should be included. That’s why we’re asking people what they think, what they’d like to see, what they use, etc. There might be something we’re missing out on completely.
Everyone on the team LOVE Wordpress and the community and want to bring something fresh and exciting to the software, that will basically elevate it above the rest. There won’t be a reason not to use Wordpress when we’re through with it, because the code is soo good and it’s such a powerful system. Hopefully we’ll enhance the usability aspect of it, make it slightly more fun and attractive to use.
This is taken from the post I announced this idea, I’m reproducing the relavant parts:
I’m going to admit something, and that’s the fact that I nearly didn’t go for Wordpress over Textpattern due to the weak interface. What can I say I’m a shallow designer, who places a lot on the actual appearance. What actually kept me was the fact that the Wordpress community was absolutely buzzing. I just had one look at the boards, and knew that if there was a question I needed it would be answered, and that was reassuring, however I’ve never liked the Control Panel, and well I don’t think it’s really on Ryan’s or Matt’s minds right now, so it’s up to the rest of the community to sort it out. That’s where the Shuttle Team come into play.
What’s the ETA on this? Don’t ask silly questions, you won’t get silly answers. To be fair I think it will be at least 2 months down the line, hopefully less, but I’m being realistic about all of this. So why mention all of this now you ask? Well as this is something that is effectively user based I’d really like to hear which plugins, functions whatever you use, used to use or whatever from other blogging systems (just name them) or whatever that you think would be perfectly suited to the admin panel.
If Matt and the rest of the team like what we’ve done, and agree with some of the changes we’ve made, it would be great to get it integrated into the proper Wordpress releases, if that doesn’t happen, that’s not a bad thing. You’ll still be able to download it from any one of out four sites, much like the 400 plus plugins, and the 40 or so themes. (ie downloading them from their respective creators).
We’re all doing this because we all feel that WP needs to be one step above the rest. The backend is one aspect which the program is somewhat lacking. Rather than bitch and moan about it, and complain, we’re being proactive and doing something we feel is right. That’s what open source projects are about. That’s why wordpress is better than the rest, the community around it is passionate about it’s use, and there are people, hunderds of people devoting hours to make it better to use.
Fantastic stuff. I’m getting really excited in the leadup to the new F1 season. My sunday just hasn’t been the same without F1 somewhere there, screwing up my timetable, as I have to work around the schedule. What can I say I’m an F1 junkie. Probably due to NBA deprevation, but hey you’ve got to make the most out of what you have.
So I was right about Heidfeld. Don’t believe me? Ooookaaay, have a look at this post here. I’m actually pretty happy with that, and to be honest it makes sense. No disrespect to Antonio, but he’s just not got the Nick edge. I don’t know what it is, but somehow I think you can trust Nick a bit more to get it right when it counts.
Obviously the Frank Williams shared my views :). Yeah me and Frank go a long way.
Also notice the swanky new Williams Website. Flashtastic. Not as smooth as it should be, and I’m on broadband, so I’d hate to see the less fortunate folks on dialup.
I do have a very good feeling about this year, and who knows I might even get to go to a race this year. We’ll see, we’ll see.
Okay, so a couple of days ago I contacted a certain somebody (Michael) to see if they wanted to join in the development of ‘Shuttle’ after I saw this post. It took a couple of days but I can proudly announce the addition of one Michael Heilemann to the Shuttle Development Team. So the team is Chris, Joshua, Michael and myself. That’s 2 designers and 2 coders.
So what does this mean? It means several things. It means the development will actually run more smoothly and probably a lot faster, as a team of 4 people in COMPLETELY different countries work on a project. It means the design and code will be the sum of many, as all open source code is.
This is what I love about the Wordpress community. It’s an actual community, that are trying to make the blogging experience that much better. That’s what open source is all about after all, people sharing and contributing to something bigger and better.
This also means that the name Shuttle and everything else might/probably will change. Hey I’m completely flexible when it comes to this sort of thing, nothing I do in terms of graphics goes to waste, I always find some way to use them. It’ll be an interesting experience if nothing else, because we’re going to make the backend of WP the best blogging backend currently available. There will be no reason why anyone shouldn’t fall over themselves to try and have Wordpress as their standard software of choice.
Bold words? Maybe, it’s just I know who’s got my back.
In the meantime research is in order. I’ll ask the regulars over here, to say what they think about the current backend of wordpress, what they like and what they don’t. The guys will probably do the same thing on their blogs.
Okay so here it is. I’ve set up a live preview for you to have a look at the theme and so any modifications, additions, alterations, bugs whatever will be talked about it there.
Manji2 Live Preview
If you leave a comment please thank Joshua as he’s 90% responsible for actually getting the code out to everyone. I’d have still been struggling with all sorts of issues, so Joshua you’re the man!!!
This is a 1.0 beta release, however expect only certain files to be changed; as I do want to tweak the aforementioned sidebar elements, and possibly clean up the css ever so slightly. You’ll notice a few hacks in there as well. That’s to make it all work in IE, which is a royal pain in the backside. Cross-browser issues really are a pain in the ass.
As you know very well there’s always more to do, however this release is pretty close. There might be some minor changes in the future, but that’s general tweaks. If we find a way to work around hacks, and a few other issues, there might be some structural changes in the index.php file. From our part we’ll make sure we post clearly what the changes are.
You can go download it now from the usual Manji download page.
Hmm I better not jinx this, but so far it’s two in two for music this week. Laurent comes into my room and hands me a CD.
I didn’t get round to listening to the album till Saturday, and god damn is it a good one. The first thing I noticed was the great design of the album cd itself. Really nice linework, good typography, generally an attractive package. Right put it onto my ipod and went out. The first track is truely awesome. One of my favourite instruments is the piano. The first track starts off with a piano solo, and the rest is just as inspiring.
It’s a mellow album, with some great moments. The singing is soft but clear. None of the elements of the music seem to want to overpower the other, just mesh together in harmony.
So basically what I’m trying to say is, ‘listen to this, I think you’ll like it.'
A 2 column official Manji flavour is being prepped. Just doing some code restructuring and getting everything as easy to customise as the original Manji theme. It’s the most demanded ‘how-to’ I get (and have gotten in the past) and while it goes against the grain for me, I’d rather have it done properly by Joshua and me.
It’ll probably get released on Sunday evening, as with most Manji releases. It’ll be called Nebular Flavoured Manji2.
It’ll be interesting to see which one is downloaded more to be honest.
Oh my it’s been a while since I was excited about new music. In fact the last time I talked about new music was in this post here. While at work, I keep tabs on Greece, while listening to RedFM. It’s my local station in Athens, and while the ads are shit, and the audio quality is not all that great, the music is generally relatively good.
I came back from lunch today, sat down and there and then I got the new Moby song on my earphones. Words cannot express my happiness when I heard it. Absolutely amazing stuff. I haven’t been this excited about new music in such a long time. The new album is called HOTEL. The first song is called ‘Lift me up’, and is easily one of the best things he’s ever done. It gave me goosebumps when I first listened to it, and I was smiling like a complete idiot for 2 hours afterwards.
In fact I remember the last time where I was when Moby released his last album. I was in Greece just after University. It was a Friday and I had to work on a Saturday. The Moby launch party was at what was my favourite club at the time (Camel Club, named for the cigarettes). It was just me and Katerina. They had a magician outside in the cue which was a great touch. Moby had a recorded message for the people of Athens which was great as well. The entire album was played. I remember Katerina had a big plaster over her nose as she’d had an accident with her window the day before and was therefore concious about it. We didn’t win the X-Box they were giving away. As we left the club they gave away free rare singles, which were great.
It was one of the best nights I’ve ever had, where I got into the music so much and genuinely enjoyed myself. I was going to call in sick the next day but I didn’t. Got back home around 5:30, 2 hours sleep and off to work. I’m hoping there’s a launch part here, because I’m definitely going.
Seems the person(s) behind Library Planet were none too pleased about my previous post. They’ve chosen to talk about it on their site rather than comment directly, probably because they thought that might be rude. Just like to say right out, when I type anything ‘controversial’ I’m not doing this to be controversial, nor am I doing this because I want to get a rise out of someone, just merely getting things off my mind.
I’m not writing this blog for anyone but myself. As I state in my about page, this is my therapy. To be honest with you I’ve not been very vocal about my political views, and kept it very clean, but sometimes I really can’t keep it in. So in direct response to his request for me to revise what I wrote, I decline.
However I will clarify my point of view and maybe include some facts for him to better appreciate how I see things. I’m not meaning this as an attack on him; I’ll hopefully be able to structure my response so that in future when I get others wondering about ‘where I’m coming from politically and socially’, I can point them back to this post here. Long post ahead, heavy on opinions, so if you’re not interested, please divert your attention any one of these websites found on the links page ^_^.
To begin, I’ll say categorically right from the start that I DO NOT HATE AMERICANS. I’ve got several close American friends, and I converse with Americans all the time, and they have always been fun and courteous with me. I made this extremely clear that my wrath is directed against the American GOVERNMENT.
Now ‘they’ve’ said that I should check the facts. Hmmm, lets have a look at my post and see what I was misinformed about. Absolutely everything I wrote in that post was a personal opinion. The only ‘fact’ that I stated was that this story is about Alia who tried to protect her culture and history, presented in the written form of books.
‘How Propaganda Breeds Hate’. Is he saying that this woman is lying? Is her story a complete falsification, and therefore propaganda against the American Government? I don’t know because the links he put up lead me to stories about ancient artifacts and how the actual reports about their loss was grossly exaggerated.
He has taken my post as me attacking the American Government for the loss of ancient artifacts, and by extension culture and history. Interesting. A people’s culture my friend is a lot more than just their history, or historical artifacts (you think I’m happy about the British Library ‘owning’ the plethora of artifacts from Greece, Egypt, China and beyond? the answer is no, but that not the only culture and history I was talking about). It’s their manner to one another, it’s their morals and it’s their way of life. Iraq to the American Government is NOTHING but one BIG UNTAPPED OIL RIG.
With the US going into Iraq and INVADING a sovereign country for FALSE reasons, not only makes me upset, it infuriates me. My loathing of the American Government isn’t something new. In fact it dates till when I can first remember. I know a thing or two about what war can do to a country. In case you forget or were uniformed I’m Lebanese.
Now how do I know it was an INVASION for FALSE reasons, hell man, here’s something of interest:
BBC-News-January 12th, 2005
Intelligence officials have confirmed the US has stopped searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
They say the chief US investigator, Charles Duelfer, is not planning to return to the country. Mr Duelfer reported last year that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons at the time of the US-led invasion nearly two years ago.
The existence of WMD had been the stated reason in Washington and London for going to war with Iraq."
The word BASTARDS comes to mind. However I’m in no position to do anything about it, which is why I write about it, this is my therapy, otherwise I’d explode. You might ask well why the fuck do you care? Simple, I care about people. I think we should be more civil to one another. The American Government is anything but civil to the world. In the past 60 years since the US has dabbled in Foreign Policy, it’s made a complete mess of things, and honestly the more you read about these things, the more you’re in utter disbelief that they continue to get away with things.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think there are many (if any governments) that you can be proud of. That’s the nature of politics, and Governments have to make tough decisions on a daily basis. However the American Government, which is also the most powerful, makes all the kinds of decisions that keep hurting people. Are making decisions, without really caring for the regards of others but their own, and the reason they can get away with it, is because they’re the most powerful. I’m surprised this didn’t make more headlines. It didn’t around here.
Final note, if anyone has an opinion that they want to share but don’t want because they think I’ll take offense, please don’t. I like a good discussion, when both sides are open minded to other ideas, that is why I have the comments turned on after all. (Oh yeah your trackback didn’t work for some reason).
Okay so it’s NOT open source, and you’ve got to download it from the Microsoft website, however you’ll love me forever for this little nugget of a software. I found out about it via DIGIT magazine. Of course something like Computer Arts should also be saying something, however they’re corporate whores that obviously get paid by companies to pimp their software and their rubbish culture (yeah sorry I’m on a bit of an attack on CA right now).
So back to Expression. As far as I can tell, it would seem Microsoft bought this software, didn’t know what to do with it, so they released it as a preview for everyone to do whatever they want. I can’t live without this program at work, as we don’t have enough Illustrator licenses, this freeware software is ideal.
What makes Expression unique is the fact that it blends raster manipulation tools with vector graphics. It was originally intended from the direction it took as an illustrator’s tool really, trying hard to bring the traditional artist to the digital realm.
Importing and Exporting You can import bitmaps, so the list includes, tiff, bmp, jpgs, gifs and even psd (photoshop files).
You can export directly as illustrator files, Flash files, pdfs and EPS files.
Main Features The main feature about expression are the fact that it actually brings in brushes into the vector realm. If you want vector graphics that look like they’re water colours you’ll find it hard to do that in Illustrator (although I’m not sure about plugins etc).
Another great feature is just how ‘lightweight’ it is. Loading this program up is soo simple with any power of computer. One of the reasons I don’t use Illustrator is because it’s soo heavy and doesn’t react to my commands as fast as I’d like, however the expression engine really does hammer through what I need without any grief.
No problems with fonts, CMYK and RGB colour schemes. This is in direct contrast to Adobe’s Photoshop Elements. It’s very verstaile to be used as a Desk Top Publishing (DTP) program, for SINGLE PAGES. So if you want to quickly deal with a pdf for someone that’s printable and you want to get the colours right you could do a lot worse than this awesome program.
Downfalls. The shortcuts aren’t customisable, so I’ve got to use the s-key to get the arrow rather than the common v-key in most programs.
This is not an open source program, and there doesn’t seem to be much development being happening into it, which is a terrible shame, as it really is worth it. I wish microsoft would just release the code as open source so that people could do something meaningful with it. I think if that were the case this could become a serious contender for Freehand etc. I mean they’re not doing anything with it, or at least not as far as I know of. If anyone’s got any other news then that would be pretty cool to hear about.
Rating: 4/5 only because it’s not open source code. However it’s such a joy to use I’ll let it slide.
Conclusion. Expression is a great light weight program, that although not open source is freeware right now. It’s greatly versatile and combines raster and vector techniques, that bring about a more ‘painters’ tool than anything else. One of my favourite finds of 2004, it was a godsend in many respects.
I fucking hate Bush and his administration. I’m not a violent man, but if I was sitting in the same room as George DUBAYOU I would probably go completely savage. I have such contempt for the ‘man’ and I use that term very loosely. What makes me more mad than the killing of civilians, and how cheap human life seems to be to such people, is their utter disregard for culture, history and knowledge.
Iraq, the cradle of civilisation as we know it has to endure constant attorcities against it due to Black Gold. You see I’m a massive history buff. I’m absolutely fascinated by stories of the past, and I don’t mean 100 years ago, I’m talking 1000years ago, 2000years ago, and anything before then. If there’s one thing I like more than history, it’s the written word. I don’t smoke or drink, however my vice is without question my book buying habit.
I buy a book of some description every single week,…without fail. To me the book is something extremely powerful. Becuase inside that book are ideas, thoughts, ideologies, methods and technologies.
Alia is a librarian. She’s from Iraq. Knowning full well that no matter what a devestating war was coming, she tried to protect knowledge, history and the past. This is her story.
While stories like this frustrate and aggravate me in more ways than I’d like to express, at the same time women like Alia remind me that there are people out there that care more than I do about these things, and they actually DO something about it.
I fucking hate the American government. More so than I did yesterday, and I SWEAR to you I never thought that was possible.
Seems like old Supes is getting back into the mainstream in a big way in the coming year. The invasion has already started although it’s been building up for a massive explosion sometime in 2006 I would think. What makes me say this today? It’s the season beginner of Smallville. I don’t watch TV. Or at least I hardly watch TV, in fact about a couple of weeks ago I watched an old interview with Micheal Moore, and Michael Stipes (from REM), and really enjoyed myself, but generally speaking I don’t watch TV. The only thing I watch however is Smallville. I missed the first 2 seasons and only really started watching it last year, but it’s very addictive watching, and generally speaking a good teen drama sort of watch. Oh sure we can’t help but laugh at these 25 year old posing as 17 year olds, but I’ve kind of gotten used to US TV being that way when approaching teen drama. I’m not a big fan of the freak of the week structure of the stories. The mystery is good, the general idea of Lex being his best friend is also a great twist on the already establish continuity and Lana is a babe, nuff said ^_^.
I haven’t read a superman comic since I was 14. And even then I wasn’t all that impressed by him. Having said that I bought a fantastic Graphic Novel (GN from now on) by Mark Waid and Leinel Francis Yu last year. Superman: Birthright. Fantastic stuff. I was actually loving all the nods and tweaks, and how well the characters jumped off the page. I highly recommend it if you’re a fan of Smallville. Hell the introduction was written by the creators of Smallville.
So we’ve got Supes on TV after a fashion, come July we’ve got Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely chronicling his exploits from the ground up, (for those in the dark these two gentlemen as some of the best professionals working in comic today).
We’ve got Bryan Singers (Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil, X-men 1 & 2) directing the new movie.
Yeah I’d say Superman is coming back in a big way, some 70 years after he was created.
<li>It's really strange, I've been living in my current house for nearly 2 and a half years, and I've walked up the main road countless times, and it's only till today that I noticed, and when I mean noticed the actual event registered in my brain, was that I live 7 minutes from a printers. These guys seem to do everything, so sometime this week I'm going to be grabbing my pen and pad and going over there to get information about printing costs for all sorts of things, because I think it's time I sorted out my digital prints. 2 1/2 years and it didn't register, where the hell was my head?</li>
<li>I'm working on my illustration of the week, and actually started with the mock up for Shuttle. Woohoo.</li>
<li>Been listening to a lot of Travis lately. 12 Memories is a great album, highly recommend it.</li>
<li>Saw <strong>Closer</strong>. Had some strong moments to it, but as Forest said 'Okay boys next time we do something more,...manly'. It was pretty rude movie in the language used, but I guess pretty close to reality. I however didn't really connect with any of the characters, except maybe Clive Owen's. I think it's a movie you can easily wait to see at home rather than go to the cinema specifically for it.
That’s what I wanted to talk about. I knew there was something I needed to write a post about, but I only remembered once I was going to Bar Tok. I’m not going to talk about Bar Tok…yet, that’s for another installment, but I’m going to talk about general life in London. I don’t intend to stay here for the rest of my life, however I think it would be good to have a few posts that actually remind me of this particular period of my life and what sort of places were around at the time.
So for the first installment I’m going to talk about sales shopping in London. Now anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a very big fan of shopping for myself, especially trousers. The reason being I’m very particular about trousers and well the current styles in London really generally don’t suit my needs. However for sales shopping in London I think it’s very very important for people to KNOW what they’re after before going out in those ridiculously busy and messy streets. This might seem very girly, but believe it or not guys need to get clothes and stuff as well. You can either get stuff YOU actually want, or stuff your girlfriend/wife chooses for you, depending on her style, it’s anyone’s guess what you’ll end up wearing to work. Think about that.
Try and avoid this kind of bargain. Go into the stores, SCAN, if you don’t find what it is you’re looking for, get out. Don’t browse casually.
Ok I finally got round to it, even though it only took a few minutes to set up, it’s just been on the backburner. So if you’ve got any ideas, or if you’ve got any bugs you’d like to report then go there and give me a shout.
There should be more people like me in Holllywwooood (think Bill Hicks when saying that in your head). Loads of new goodies over at the official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Why am I a genius you ask? If I may refer you to this here post from over a year ago. See that’s why I’ve got a blog. So I can prove I had these ideas back in the day. My favourite line is this:
That teaser trailer is brilliant and every time I see the DON’T PANIC title I crack up. Probably because it reminds of school a bit. Basketball was very big in my school, the unfortunate thing was that whenever Slieman used to get the ball, some how you could feel the PANIC in his movements and eyes. He’d tense up so as to not fuck up, ultimately Stathi the bastard copped on and kept yelling DON’T PAAANNNIIIICCC, every time he had the ball. Needless to say he’d panic even more.
Good times.
So the new Computer Arts issue is out. I guess I’ve got a love/hate relationship with this magazine. Generally speaking I can’t wait to get it and when I do it takes me a total of 2 days to read through EVERY SINGLE page, and get annoyed by the corporate whoring of EVEYRTHING. I guess being a jadded about corporate culture can do that to a man, but when they put a thumbs up for Quark City or whatever the fuck they’ve called buying a small town in India, as a good idea I kind of loose patience.
See I approach design and graphics and illustration from a completely different angle to them, but then I can afford to do this, I’m not a professional graphic designer, in that I don’t do this for a LIVING. I do this because I love to illustrate and design and learn new programs. My favourite parts of the magazine are the interviews and the showcasing of people’s work. I spend ages going back to something I saw in there and grabbing some sort of inspiration.
One of my original ideas last year was to create 12 images in one year and have them put as a calender. Now I did a bit more than 12 illustrations, however not nearly as many as I wanted. So I’m going to set myself a new target this year. I had said I want to draw more this year, however I never actually got round to specifying the number. Well I think this will be the hardest thing, but at the same time it will teach me to really hone my skills to accomodate for speed and pressure. So I’m going to set a target of 1 illustration a week for the year of 2005, except when I’m on holiday.
Currently I’m 3 behind, although CoCo up there does qualify as an illustration, just need to retweak an A3 image with him in it. So I’ve got to do 2 this week and then one every week after that. It could potentially be one of the hardest things I do in terms of keeping up the work, but after 1 year I will have an emmense body of work of which I can actually have a very decent portfolio.
I’ve got a few more tweaks to BK I need to get round to completing as they were originally part of the design, it’s just I’ve been taking a breather from it all and realigning my ducks as it were and gaining a bit more forward thrust of this crazy year.
It’s been a while since I posted one of these, and this is definitely not a slant on all you beautiful people that have been slaving away on your superb Manji designs it’s just that this one as I’m sure you’ll agree truely does deserve a mention.
It belongs to Catonya and Rick, however it was designed by Lisa Fahrmeyer from Cafelisa. From her website it’s clear that Lisa has a distinct style to her work, and that’s something that’s a rare thing on the internet. To have a style that people associated you with. Lisa seems to be of an illustration background and that mentality shows. As illustrators you spend years trying to find your voice. I guess the same can be said of graphic and web design in general.
Well that was fun. No not the game. Haven’t played the game (or any video game for that matter for donkey’s). The message boards got hit by the friggin phpbb worms attack and so my hosting service decided to suspend my account. Yeah like I said fun. I’ll tell you what’s annoying, having sent an e-mail asking them to unsuspend so that you can do a 10 minute job and the whole process taking over a day to sort out.
Another thing that was annoying was the fact that they didn’t mention this to me, just up and did it so yesterday morning I wake up with YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN SUSPENDED.
I didn’t care so much about a lot of things, like the messages on the board while nice, only server one specific purpose and that was to help people out, but it’s not the end of the world if they’re gone, however my blog posts see that was a different situation altogether. I initially was getting a bit upset, but calmed down after like 2 minutes of thinking about it, as a rational human being, and wrote them a nice long e-mail.
Really bad because I had loads I wanted to write about yesterday, momentum’s gone though, hopefully it’ll pick up today.
It was pretty funny though, my brother gave me a ring last night to check that I was OK based on whether or not my website was up or not. Damn I must talk about it a bit too much on the outside. What can I say, it’s currently my main method of expression and I’m very protective of the place. Which reminds me to download the MySQL database. I think I’m going to do that every month. Just to be sure. It’ll probably take 5 minutes a month, but at least anything the hosting company does won’t hit me too hard.
I’ve already told them that I’m going to be leaving at the end of the contract, so they’ve stopped the automatic billing. I’ve got several alternatives up my sleeve, and I’ll see which one I go for, although to be honest Dreamhost seems like the one to beat right now, especially with their New Years offers on.
Update: And I thought I had problems. Acta Divina has apparently been hacked into and killed. They’re shutting down because of this. That’s huge news for the Design community as it was between them, Media Temple and 2advanced.
Just thought I’d highlight a couple of new pages added to the site. I will say this, it takes a lot of time and effort to make a site whole. Makes me really appreciate other sites a lot more that I know the guys and gals have put soo much effort into them. I will also say that the wordpress static page feature is a very welcome addition. I guess a lot of these pages will evolve as time goes by and I edit them and tweak them, but just so you know they exist:
So I decided to go by Warren’s website, to see what he’s up to. For the uninitiated, Warren Ellis is a comic book writer. He’s really hot and cold with me to be honest. Sometimes he writes something that I think is absolutely stunning in quality and then he goes and writes some psycho thriller with prostitutes and rapid monkeys, or based on whatever bbc thing he was fascinated by at the time.
He used to run a blog called Die Puny Humans, but that’s been meshed into his current warrenellis.com site. The good news is he’s running it on Wordpress, hurray, the bad news it seems he’s lost his designated web monkey, or she bailed on him, or she’s decided to sleep at the wheel. Warren usually has nice looking sites (except for the aforementioned DPH which was an ugly thing and ran on Moveable Type (notice my blog system elitism in the tone people, in the tone, it’s worse than a mac user).
The current incarnation of his site is just aweful. I mean you’d find it pretty difficult to understand what it is the man actually does. It’s a complete mess, he can do oh so much better than that., and reason I know he can is because he’s done so in the past. Think of the children you bastard, think of the childern (Bastard btw is Warren’s most used word in the english language).
One of the most common questions on the boards, is how do you add another column for Manji. Now I’d originally decided not to ever release Manji with two columns, and the reason for that is simple, just about all blogging themes have got at least two columns. Some might argue for good reason. I tend to believe that in order to keep Manji unique, I would keep it single column, and that was the philosphy.
Of course even I’ve resorted to doing a two column layout within Manji, and it’s been there since the day I released version 1.0, on the official Manji download page. Is it hard to implement, no not really. So here it is for all you crazy cats that have decided to go to the wordpress boards with this question after I told you NO ^_^, yeah that’s right I’m looking at you, I’ll spill the BIG secret.
Eventually I guess I might release another Manji flavour, but the Nebula Flavoured Manji will always be single column.
In the CSS, add the following lines:
.rightcolumn{ float: right; width: 350px; }
.leftcolumn{ float: left; width: 150px; }
Where you’re going to have your posts edit them in the following way (I’ve included SPACES so that the code can actually show up):
Pretty simple I know. In fact if anyone had looked at the Manji download page, their problem would have been solved instantly ^_^.
I promise this is like literally the last time I talk about this. I finally got EVERYTHING clear in my head about this. After the previous post Carthik said,
Curious, does it matter who has the copyright. It’s a pretty worthless thing, so I started thinking and talking about it again. I couldn’t get this little thing out of my head. After all I’ve put a copyright in the Manji CSS code, but I only did that because I was following the GPL instructions to a ‘T’ when I released the theme. Turns out that line is (where I put my name and together with the GPL license) the only things you’re not allowed to remove from the code. These lines won’t bloat the actual file size and don’t effect the SOFTWARE in any way.
You see if I said you’re not allowed to take of a link within the template back to this site, the WHOLE software is no longer FREE (in the sense of complete freedom). It’s a line of code you’re not allowed to touch. That goes against the GPL license. The code is meant to be editable in every way.
How do I the creator retain the credit? With the inclusion of my copyright credit line in the comments. Found this directly from the GPL license FAQ.
Yeah ok, but what happens when I modify your code? Aha, very simple, YOU retain your copyright to the CHANGES you’ve made. You just add your copyright credit after my copyright credit and you’re away.
There’s nothing immoral, at least from my point of view, about removing the CODE that retains to my name and a link back to this website. However it is immoral and wrong if you remove my copyright line and the GPL license. And that my friends is GPL for templates. I’ve put a link in there as part of the core code. You have EVERY right to remove it and modify it in any way. If the original creator wanted to retain that one line of code in there, then a creative commons license should have been applied.
Some people might choose NOT to include that copyright line. I suspect that is the case with B2 and wordpress, because Matt hasn’t included Micheal V’s copyright in there, and neither does Matt have a copyright there either, at least I can’t find any.
My mind is wondering this morning. I’ve got more projects on my plate than I care to think about, so I’m going to brain dump right now, go out for a walk and maybe grab a coffee, regroup my thoughts.
<li>Nick Heidfeld is going to be racing for <a href="http://www.williams-f1.com">Williams</a> next year. No it's not official news but I've got a good feeling about this. I think Nick will do exceptionally well, and while many people got excited when Jenson Buttface was going to come to Williams, I was one of the few that didn't see this as a good thing. Even though Frank Willaims thinks that this year is going to be an interim year before they get back up to speed with other things I think Webber and Nick will do a stumpendous job and this year we might actually do better than the crappy last season.</li>
<li>Thinking of cooking a rissoto today. This is part of my 1 new completely different dish a week new years resolution. The idea is that once a week I tackle a new receipe that I've never done before. By the end of the year I've learn 52 new dishes. So far I've cooked a Cheese Gratin, I'll post my thoughts after I'm done with the Rissoto.</li>
<li>The new <a href="http://www.batmanbegins.com">Batman Begins</a> website has been updated slightly. This I'm excited about.</li>
<li>The new comic book list of the week can be found <a href="http://www.diamondcomics.com/shipping/shipping_011205.txt">here</a>. There are a couple of things I'll eventually get round to buying from the list, although I'm not completely dying for the stuff. I'm a bit pissed off that <a href="http://www.theredstar.com">Team Red Star</a>, have released the Hardcover of Vol3 now, after I'd already bought the trade paperback. The thing is though, I bought this like 1 month ago and I still haven't read through it yet. Not sure what's been causing my slackness with my comic book reading lately.</li>
<li>If you're a windows user and think the current theme you're using is rubbish compared to some more pretty things out there, from KDE and even Apple, here's something you'll love <a href="http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Royale-Theme-for-WinXP-leaked-Screenshot-13027.html">Royal Theme XP</a>.</li>
Hmm, ok after I wrote my previous post I strolled over to this link over at podz’s website. For those in the dark, Podz is an incredibly helpful chap. He’s always online answering questions on the wordpress forums and should be given a medal. He was going to help out with Manji as well which was nice, but he got a bit busy which is completely understandable.
After I read through his post and really started thinking about things, the following dawned upon me, Manji doesn’t belong to me. Wordpress doesn’t belong to Matt Mullenweg, and Persian doesn’t belong to Chris J Davis. Wordpress was a derivative of B2 which was originally on a GPL license morphed into Wordpress, does anyone know who the lead designer on B2 was? No, I know it’s easy to find out, but off the top of your head does anyone know? Unless you were using B2 probably not.
GPL basically means NOBODY has copyright of that particular bit of code. It’s there out in the open for everyone to play around with and create something better and bigger.
So when Michael asked people to credit him in the Kubrick code (download kubrick and read the readme file), he effectively had no right to do that, simply because HE made the decision to release Kubrick under a GPL license. People could do that if they were so inclined and wanted to thank him for it. But they have NO OBLIGATION. They can then take that code alter it and release it under a completely different name, without even thinking about including his name or whatever. Not even in the CSS. The only stipulation I see that you can’t do is alter the license. Nothing you do after that make it copyright of you. You don’t own the copyright of the code, and neither does the originator. In fact making people feel like they have to credit you kind of goes against Open Source code. You don’t see php.net in the bottom there, or apache.org anywhere on the site (except now of course). And yet this site wouldn’t be here for you to see without these open source codes.
This seems to be standard practice for most code we all use. Who’s the lead designer for Apache? What about MySQL? PHP? Some projects have a lead developer, since it does take a lot of time and knowledge and resources to keep something like Wordpress going. Matt’s doing a great job, but he could decide to stop tomorrow, he has after all turned 21, (Happy Birthday dude), does that mean the end of Wordpress? Well maybe, but the code might live on with someone else who would probably rename it and not include Matt’s name in there. Then again he might, but that would be a courtesy thing.
Which basically means that if you put the code in the bottom with a link back to where it was downloaded from, well that’s just a courtesy thing really. Nothing in the code stipulates that you have to link back to this site. So what I’m saying about Manji is that, by me releasing it under a GPL license, you’re effectively free to do whatever you want with it. You want to keep a link to my site in there, go right ahead, I thank you kindly and appreciate all your love. If you don’t want, take it out. What you can’t do is then say that the design is YOUR copyright, because no matter what you do with it, it will NEVER be your copyright. It’s out there in cyberspace to live or die. I will continue to work on Manji, tweaking and fixing bugs, because it means a lot to me. Wordpress is a community and in the same way that I have taken so much from it this was one way of giving something back.
So if you want disregard the below post, I could ask you to put the link, but NOTHING in the license I release with Manji says you have to. I include the link as a default, but as with everything else in that file, you’re free to do with as you please.
It’s amazing what a day does, after you’ve thought about things a little.
In my trolls around the internet I’ve seen several conflicting footers with regards to credits to Manji. I guess this is my fault since to be honest I don’t have a readme file that states any of this. I’m going to hopefully finish this off in the next couple of days along with the user manual for all you newbies who would like to understand the structure and how you can go about actually skinning Manji.
I will say that the majority of the sites I’ve been to that have used Manji have left the credits in tack and in some cases gone a bit further and given me copyright of their blog as well ^_^. Needless to say YourSite is NOT copyright of Khaled Abou Alfa. Your site is your copyright. I’ve got to say that I’m really proud of you guys for being so honest and cool about keeping the Manji credit in tact.
Which leads me to my next point. Could all those using the preview version of Manji (around 1000 downloads) make the link back to manji the following:
Many people are getting this page when they link to this site, kind of defeats the object doesn’t it? http://www.brokenkode.com/index.php?p=470
In the meantime I’ll say this about the footer credits. I guess all I ask is that you keep one line in there:
That’s all I ask (of course and keeping the proper creditation in the css and the GPL license). Which funnly enough brings me to my final point about this I promise. There has been some talk about people releasing their Manji flavours to the world at large. In fact Scott has already released his Flavour for Wordpress Version 1.2. Personally I’m all for this effort. It’s what GPL is all about. Community and people adding to something someone started or whatever. It’s more fun that way.
So what happens then? Well then the footer does change and personnally I’d really like it to be something along the lines of the following:
In the CSS your name gets added to the list of people before you. So my name and Root’s and then yours and then the next person after you. To be honest none of this will ever get policed. It’s just a courtesy thing really nothing more nothing less.
Found the link for this on the Designate Online forums. The following is taken from the Building Letters page for the Tsunami Relief effort:
This is what I’ve decided to give to this effort. Originally I wanted to use this as the Manji logo but I think somehow it seems like it was made for this effort.
I do urge any other designers out there with a few hours to spare to contribute to this edition
So I’m talking with my brother, asking him how he’s getting along, seeing if he’s integrating with the local culture.
‘Joined a sorority yet? GAMA ALPHA BETA.’
‘Haha! Asshole! Nobody in my dorms are in cause we’re the ghetto people! We live in the projects. We can’t afford $500 a year.’
‘You serious??????’
‘Yep…’
‘You have to pay $500?’
‘Yeah…per year.’
‘That’s some seriously fucked up shit. What do you get for it?’
He paused for a second and replied, ‘Friends.’
Needless to say I doubled over laughing. I’m sorry but that’s fucking ridiculous. I really think my bro should start a blog about all the different ideas and customs that he experiences while in America. He might not appreciate it now, but I guarantee he’ll love it 2-3 years down the line.
This is a long one (roughly 1600 words), so I guess grab a coffee and chill.
Broken Kode was updated 3 times in 2004, but I consider this to be version 2.0. The reason is the first version was using Moveable Type, when they decided to screw everyone over I moved elsewhere that same night. I didn’t wait a single day, I didn’t contemplate keeping my blog and then finding something more suitable, even though I’d spent soo long trying to understand their structure and code, that same night I left, and I’ve never regretted that decision. That design was scuppered, and I did the design that was online till December, when I used the default Manji template for a month. But that really wasn’t for any other reason except to get people familiar with the design. Which reminds me to make a live preview going.
So here we are BK v2.
Initial Though Process. I started designing Manji on the 1st of October. I knew that I would eventually have my own version of the template, but to be honest until I released Version 1.0 of Manji, I hadn’t actually given Broken Kode any thought…nothing. So with the release I finally could sit back and have a look and take note.
I did over 7 mock ups for the design. Each time I varied the colour scheme. I’m serious I’ve been through quiet a lot of colour schemes that I could probably do another 5 decent variations of the Manji theme. I’ve already mentioned Lava, well that’s not even on this list.
Sadly none of them clicked. Don’t ask me why. It was just a gut feeling I had that they just weren’t fun enough. Aha, so that’s the type of site I was looking for now, something more fun to look at. With that germ of an idea I let it ferment in my head.
While in Greece, I went and joined Stathi at work. He’s part-timing in a bar till he gets an engineering job. We went a bit earlier to chill out and talk. He said it wasn’t going to be busy but that he would have to sort things out for half an hour or something. I wasn’t prepared to sit on my ass an do nothing so I took a pad and a pen. From there I started sketching. I’d always wanted to have a mascot for the site, however I was too preoccupied with a bunch of other things to really do anything about it. For some reason that night something clicked, and when I looked up from the bar, there was this bottle staring at me, yeah you guessed it with the words CoCo on them, perfect.
It’s been a while since I’ve created a character like that but it was pretty awesome because the inspiration kept flowing and by the next day I’d done this sketch.
I had to wait a total of 5 days before I could scan it in and ‘redraw’ it in Flash and Freehand. It was torture I can tell you that much. I had the inspiration but I couldn’t finish it all off.
Colour Schemes
I’ve got to thank my housemate Laurent who’s been really good to chat to about the colour and overall design aspects. As it turned out CoCo dictated the actual final colour scheme. Once I’d gotten the aqua/green/blue and red everything else kind of fell into place, hell even I was surprised by the pink, but for some reason it works very well. I guess if you struggle with colour schemes, you could either use one of the following methods to help you out:
or alternatively you could simply be inspired by one of your favourite drawings at the time.
Ok so I’ve got my colour scheme. Thank god. With that in hand I was able to see what was what and how everything worked in Manji. Sure I know the code, but I wasn’t sure how easy and intuitive it was to actually skinning it. I’d tried to sort it out in as much of a user friendly way as possible. It was pretty simple actually. What I loved the most about the experience was the fact that I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. The structure and 80% of the code was there, all I had to do was take it away from there. The hardest part was the first to be honest, but once I got into the groove I was away.
Plugins Galore I’ll be making a proper page for the plugins I use because to be honest these guys and gals have done an unbelievable job in implementing some fantastic functionality into a wordpress powered blog. There are currently about 14 plugins and about 3 hacks being used to get Broken Kode the way it is. That’s an immense amount of hours spent by each and every person involved in implementing this code, and I think they really should get a proper mention. What’s funny is that as I was implementing these plugins and hacks I remembered how much I’ve improved in the 7 months I’ve been using Wordpress. I remember spending roughly 2 weeks trying to sort out the preview plugin alone. Posting on several blogs and message boards trying to sort it out. It was a strange experience but in a way I kind of saw what I was doing. Actually understood that doing this would screw the pooch. Oh sure I’m still a complete spaz when it comes to php code, but I’m actually starting to understand it. In fact there was only one feature that I really wanted to implement into the design that I didn’t get a chance to do yet, and that’s the separate trackbacks/pings and comments. Hopefully that will get resolved sometime this week (not that I get many trackbacks mind, however I’d like to have that option available, you know just in case).
Debugging Now unlike some people (yeah you Chris), I can’t do a bloody redesign in 2.5 hours. It took me (just coding) about 2 days to get everything to work nicely. Once I’d sorted it out in Firefox, the problem was that it looked a complete mess in IE. You can’t not take IE into account because 50% of the people that come to BK are IE users (shame on you all, download Firefox today ^_^) . So I must have spent 4 hours debugging.
Design aspects Manji in many ways is a derivative of the original BK design. When I say derivative I’m talking about the design aspect of course, since that’s what I was in charge of. So the search bar is right at the bottom since it just makes more sense there for me, it’s single column since the content should be what it’s all about. The page that I changed the most was the comments page. I’ve been thinking about this a lot actually and I think that comments pages are really important because they bring the blogging community that much closer together. I’ve met a number of fantastic people online through forums and blogs and I think it’s these comments and allowing each other to add their voice that really adds and enhances the blogging experience.
So why so different from the original Manji? Loads of features that I love in a blog can only be achieved through the use of plugins. So when doing the design for Manji I made a conscious effort to make sure that I didn’t actually make it hard for anyone to have it up and running. Sure it’s not ideal but I remember back when I was a newbie and hacking anything but the css was just too much for me, and even then I wasn’t exactly confident in what I was doing. I streamlined everything a little bit. For my design I wanted to implement all those ideas the way I would have liked to send out the template in the first place. I’m glad at least that the comment buttons don’t need a plugin because I would have been pretty bummed.
Originally I was going to have the title bar etc in the middle but CoCo took over and I had to find some sort of balance, which is why you’ve got the title in big on the right hand side, which all the title block etc aligns to the left. Balance was something I did think a great deal about, and that top header took me several tries to get it that way.
By sheer luck I didn’t need to change the colour of the comment icons as they actually work well with the chosen colour scheme.
One of my favourite features is the navigate via category. That’s definitely something I’ll be using a lot. I’ll be using a lot? Surely you mean the user will be using a lot? Well no. See there’s been a lot of talk on the net about blogging and what a personal webpage should be about. I didn’t start of Broken Kode so that I could cater to anyone save myself. It’s a method of expression for me, it’s my therapy and I honestly couldn’t live without it right now. When I was going the redesign I was think how it would be for me to use. What would I enjoy when I scroll back through the posts. I’ll talk a lot more about the reasons for this blog in my about page once I get that sorted out.
Final note really, what’s with the actual font I’ve chosen for the header? Well it’s all because I don’t work as fast as I’d like to. That being said I’ve actually done the initial design for an original font for the site. I’ll eventually get around to updating it, however I thought as a homage to my favourite band in the world (the smashing pumpkins) I’d use one of their last ever fonts used for their final album that wasn’t released in the shops. It’s an internet only album free to download, and that was one of the fonts used in this release. Friends and Enemies of Machine. Rock on.
I’m going to start posting reviews on software you might not know about that you really should be using, or could greatly benefit from using. There’s like 10 I’ve got in mind right now, but I’m really hoping that the list will actually increase as time goes by, since I love to use and support open source projects. Every once in a while however I’ll stumble on some freeware (but doesn’t operate under a GPL license) that deserves a mention, so you can put that into this list as well. It’s crazy what you can find on the internet.
Overview So we’ll get the first one underway with Notepad2. I originally thought it wasn’t open source however after digging a little deeper, ie in the text file, you see the following magic words:
Notepad2 is based on the Scintilla source code editing component: http://www.scintilla.org
The full Notepad2 source code is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and can be found at: http://www.flos-freeware.ch
I can’t stop using this little application. I use it at work as much as I use it at home and that’s really due to it’s extreme versatility.
Features: So how does Notepad2 differ from Notepad found on all Windows machines? There are a number of great features that make it different. Here’s a brief list of what I find the most useful:
<li>No matter what type of file you open (well there are exceptions of course), it's probably built in with a colour coding syntax, so it's easier to read through</li>
<li>A great feature is that if you've got Notepad2 open, you can just drag and drop the required file into the edit area and it will automatically load the file, without having to go through the hassle, <em>open file ></em> etc etc.</li>
<li>Simple functions like, line wraping, auto indent and zoom functions.</li>
<li>It remains lightweight, for quick access, and quick edits to any file. So it'll load up even if you're on a slow machine</li>
<li>Very customisable, adding a great deal of flexibility to file editing.</li></ul>
Rating:4/5
Pros - Lightweight, customisable, open source code. Cons - No spell check and no plans for tabbed browsing (great little feature to have). While this would be a great feature I understand what the thinking behind Notepad2 is:
I’ll be posting a much more indepth post about the thought processes and ideas and what was used to make Broken Kode Version 2.0 a reality and what still needs to be done. I guess this is like my ‘beta’ version. I’ve still got validation and clean-up code, but I really want to see it go live as I’ve been thinking about this redesign for about 1 month and I really couldn’t wait to get it up and out there.
BTW CoCo is my new site maskot.
Now I think some serious sleep is in order.
So I’ve been doing a bit of a tidy up of this site. So I’ve got no drafts, no unused plugins, and I’ve streamlined the categories, which basically made me thing that I’m not really using the blog for some of the ideas I had, which were to talk about other things that really interest me. This has prompted me to rethink my blogging strategy slightly and start making use of all these links I’ve got and start to actually write reviews and give people some information they might not have been privy about. So once ‘CoCo’ goes live I’ve got a couple of additions I’ll be making a much bigger effort with regards to what get’s posted on the site. Vague, yeah well eventually everything will make sense.
Yesterday marked the first time this site has been hit hard by spammers. I mean this was some seriously sick stuff, and apparently Matt’s site was hit and so was Nuclear Mooses', and I’m guessing a whole bunch of other wordpress sites. Which brings me to thank a few people for all their hard work, because seriously it was really pretty bad feeling, because as bloggers we’re completely helpless from these mindless fucks that keep attacking. See the problem is that we’re always on the defensive, and I wish we could be on the offensive, giving these absolute fuckers some payback. So thanks to Dr.Dave and Kitty for their great work, really appreciate all the great efforts for both spam plugins.
I think I’m going to start blogging about comics a bit more this year. I’m not going to comment on every bit of news that comes my way, just things that I find pretty interesting, as a mark for the future, what to keep an eye out for etc. So lets have a look at what’s going on in the comic book world of late.
What a shit name. I mean if the Ultimate line with it’s butt-ugly trade dress design and name wasn’t bad enough, I can’t think how rubbish the design for this series of books is going to be. That being said, the talent attached to these projects is pretty amazing.
So Jim Lee is going to be drawing while Frank Miller will be writing. I remember when I was reading Deathblow back in the early 90s Miller lashed out at Lee for apeing his style of Sin City for that book, and now they’re working together on what is going to be the best selling comic book in the english speaking world for the year 2005. Man how things change.
Am I excited about this news? Not really sure. When I first heard about it I was really loving it, Superman for 12 issues by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, 12 issues of Batman by Jim Lee and Frank Miller, what’s not to get excited about. Whatever these gentlemen touch generally turns to gold. They’ve all contributed to some fantastic stories in the past, of exceptional quality.
Then there’s that rumour that Adam Hughes is going to be involved with the Wonder Woman revamp, seriously stupendous news for me as Adam is one of my absolute favourite illustrators ever.
Are these characters done and dusted, old and tattered? Hardly. Two of my favorite comics 2004 were Superman books. I haven’t read Superman in 10 years. I bought the books based on the creators involved, and they absolutely blew me away. I only buy my books in collected format, I might have to bend the rules just this once so that I don’t get the story ruined by pricks on the internet that can’t keep their mouths shut.
As of Monday and every Monday I’ll be having a graphic novel review of the week. Sometimes it will of books that came out that week, other times it will be with regards to books I read a while back and are on my shelf. The first review will be of the Ultimates, as I just finished reading Volume 1 of that book.
What a year. I honestly can’t believe this year has already come and gone. Yesterday also marked the first full year of blogging, although not a full year of BrokenKode.
I’ve been writing this entry for a few days now, and it keeps growing and growing, and to be honest the more I write the more I feel what a great busy year this has been, through it’s bad times and it’s good times. It’s been a full year in every meaning of the world, and in many ways has also been one of the most saticfying ever. I guess there are several reasons for that.
I’ve got a lot to be thankful for and one of the things I’m very happy I did was this here blog. It’s original ideas was to have a news section of my website I could update in an easy fashion evolved into soo much more.
It started life as part of blogger. A bit of searching around and I thought Moveable Type was the way to go. When they decided to change their policy on payment, that was it game over for me, I started searching around the net for a suitable alternative.
<ul>
<li><strong>Open Source Code</strong> - Franchesco starting work in the office, and I was introduced to the wonderful world of Open Source code, and what it means to be a part of an online community.
From these conversations I downloaded Firefox 0.7, Wordpress 1.2, Blender 2.34 and Xammp 2.0. From then it was a mission to find the next great piece of software that I didn’t know about.
Best Movies. Not a great year for movies IMHO, however those that are worth mentioning and remembering are gems.
Best Graphic Novels. Fantastic year for the graphic novel. Such a diverse range of books to choose from. However it was the year of Manga for me, with some brilliant books on offer, that remind me why reading comics is this much fun, and why I don’t watch TV.
Best Music. A pretty decent year for music I must say. It could be better, but the new REM album wasn’t to my liking, and neither was the new U2 album, but I was introduced to several great bands, most of all however The Killers, for actually producing an album that I can enjoy fully.
Best Websites.
I turn around for like one minute and bam, everyone’s been busy with all sorts of things left right and centre. I feel like I didn’t achieve much this Christmas while everyone else was hard at work on various projects here and there.
Don’t believe me, let’s start with Matt, man’s just released bbPress. This is a forum system that runs the Wordpress Support forums. Hmm interesting, only because it seems like it can be integrated into Wordpress directly. I do like phpbb, and I love how much progress they guys and gals have made since the last time I used this package. So although I’d like to support your Matty, I’m going to have to wait and play around before the verdict can truly be out on that one.
Erm, we’re now running Wordpress 1.5 Beta? Damn man, I was running 1.3 Alpha not that long ago, how did this all happen? Oh and Kubrick is now the default, comes straight out the box. Is this a good thing? I’d like to think so, as it’s a tad(understatement) bit better in terms of design to original design. I think it’s a good move for the Wordpress community at large. So congrats to Micheal.
Scott’s been busy as well. I think I’m going to go for his gallery solution as well for the Manji Gallery. Glad to see he’s reverted back to his red masthead as well. I’ve been thinking about the wp 1.2 version Manji (since his site is running manji with wp 1.2.2) , and can’t help but feel it would be a waste of time, since we’re so close to WP 1.5 or whatever we’ll end up with. We’re in Beta peeps, it’s close I can feel it. To be honest I’d rather sort out bugs and tweaks for Manji 1.3 than go back; Lava Flavoured Manji and Like Manji: Loaded.
Manji: Loaded what’s that? Heh, wait for it baby, wait for it.
Which reminds me, for all those experiencing a bit of Peek-a-boo rubbish in IE (that is the comment information sometimes shows up and sometimes disappears, again only appears for IE), please modify your Manji code with the following
And a semi-colon after, somehow it got missed out in the last iteration.
Version 1.02 has already been uploaded. Oh yeah just wanted to thank all the kind kids on the Manji boards that are helping each other, thanks for caring enough to point things out to me as well, much appreciated.
My buddy Franchesco has released the very first iteration of his B/rad program. When I get a change I’m going to help him tart up his website to make it slightly more fun to look at. Open Source doesn’t have to be ugly.
So my brother’s in the states now. How the hell did that happen? Well his Uni screwed the funds closed down and the main centre in California took in all the displaced students.
This move of his seriously takes me back to 1997, and the start of my Uni years. You go there, not knowing a soul, it’s the start of a new adventure, a clean slate. The world at your feet, and there’s a certain amount of fear. It’s your first time away from home and you’re in a completely different country, sometimes it feels like a completely different world.
Then your first culture shock hits you like a ton of bricks and all of a sudden things get weird. After a little while you start seeing the trees from the forest and you start understanding what’s going on.
Good luck bro you’re going to need it, as you get used to living in the same space with someone else (roomies and all that rubbish).
1 more day in Athens. It’s been a fantastic 10 days, got some drawing done, got some writing done, and did a bit of creating. Capped off 2004 in style. I’ve got to put the final touches of my mammoth 2004 in review post, but here’s wishing everyone a good and productive year.
Wish I’d done this last year so that I could actually see what I completed and what I didn’t, what took preference over what and why. So what are my plans for the coming 12 months. No one can predict the future, no matter how hard they try convincing you otherwise, however this is what I’d like to do in the next 12 months. Some things I have power over, other things I really have no power over at all.
It will be interesting to revisit this list in the coming months and see how much I’ve actually progressed. I’ve now got a battle plan, it’s in writing, so I guess it’s time to put up or shut up.
One of the worst disasters in recent memory deserves your attention. I was going to get going on this subject sometime next week when I was back in the UK but I guess there’s no time like the present.
Amazon If you live in the UK then you can do that much more good by donating to the British Red Cross via amazon.co.uk. Due to the tax system, anything you donate you’ll get another 30% added on top of that.
For a quick way go to amazon.co.uk where a quick pay system has been set up. I’ve already sent my $120 which effectively is only like 60 quid.
Google. Google also has something set up here: http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html
Alternatives. If you’d rather send it via another organisation CNN has got a list of all the places where you can send money throug, here’s the link:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/28/tsunami.aidsites/
Can’t seem to get to sleep. There’s this fantastic song by Bobby Gaylor, called Suicide. It’s something akin to what Buz Leurmann did for the Sunscreen song. In it there’s a line that says:
For the past week Stathi and I have been going on stakeouts. It’s pretty stupid but great at the same time. Basically we get a couple of hot chocolates or coffees at like 3am in the morning, sit in a car (mine or his) and talk about everything under the sun. Usually we end up analysing life the universe and women of course. The car is always parked in front of the house, but for some reason it’s more fun to sit in the car.
No stake out tonight, can’t get to sleep, and it’s not even summer. Hope everyone has fun tomorrow night.
There used to be an advert in Greece, and as most greek adverts it was shit. You had Chris Isaak in the background, two 30 year olds bump into each other and remember a time when they were good friends, and were drinking Amstel so they go off and have another Amstel reminding each other of the last time they were together and didn’t have anything better to do/say than drink that piss that is Amstel beer.
Yeah it was shit. Thing is I’m living the bloody advert right now. I was raised in Athens, and I’ve been living away on and off for close to 8 years. Everything I see or do just brings nostalgic feelings of years gone by.
Bumped into a few people from school whom I’ve not seen in nearly 8 years or so, and it was very strange but I guess pretty cool at the same time…and all the time I could hear Chris Isaak in the background. I hate Chris Isaak (probably because of that damn ad series where they raped him completely).
So my parent moved houses early this year, and of course my treasure trove of a room and everything that was in it was moved as well. Needless to say there were casualties of this fine move. My Fight Club dvd (damn man that’s painful), my Iron Giant dvd and I think a couple of books as well. Don’t even want to think what comics they’ve ‘misplaced’.
However while sorting all this stuff out I went through all my drawings, since 1996. That’s a lot of drawings, but what’s really special in my eyes at least is that I can see serious development from year to year. Brings a certain amount of confidence for when I finally get round to drawing ‘Sublime’.
Damn. I’ve been stuck in front of my computer for too long I think. I mean, I’ve been back in Greece for 2 days and already I sorted out at a conceptual level the logo design I’ve been promising Alfie for like 2 months. It’s incredibly simple and yet has everything we’ve talked about all in this simple logo.
I spent months battling the options and trying to come up with decent ideas but the thing is all I needed was to calm down from the routine of working life, and I’d be able to achieve everything I wanted.
I always wanted to create a mascot for this site as well, but to be honest again it was just a thought. I can create characters pretty quickly, when I’ve inspiration, so the fact that I’ve done that as well in such a short period of time is just getting me all excited thinking about what other things I’ll come up with in the coming week and a bit.
I will unveil my design sometime in the not too distant future, but needless to say I’ll be trying to use Blender at some stage for the character animation. What’s funny is that usually I struggle with coming up with the name that fits the character, this time round I actually came up with the name and created the character around that name.
Today I concetrate on the finalising my plot draft and start drawing spreadsheets for ‘Sublime’.
Just realised that next Tuesday marks one full year of active blogging. I think a year ender mammoth post is lurking on the horizon.
Well here’s the first Manji port I know of. I believe a textpattern version is in the works as well. However Chris over at ichris.ws has already ported Manji over for Drupal 4.5 . I’d like to take the opportunity to thank the man for all his work on it.
The page with all the information is located here www.ichris.ws/drupal/themes/manji
So I’m back in Greece for the next 10 days, and there are soo many things I miss. For a start I’ve got to say that I really miss driving. I miss the fact that I can go out at night and not worry when or how I’m going to get back. I miss that completely relaxed feeling.
Now I’m going to rant because well it’s been a while since I had a decent rant. I flew from Gatwick today (mental note, it’s not as bad as I originally thought), and I’ve got to say that I saw the largest amount of female chavs I’ve ever seen in one area.
What’s more I think I mingled with greek chavs as well. They’re not chavs as such but if Greece had chavs that is what they would look like.
For everyone wondering, Chavs? What the hell are Chavs? I point you to the excellent ChavScum website, where all information is provided for you. Damn man, Gatwick Duty free even had a bloody Burbery store. CHAVTASTIC.
And on that happy note I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.
Damn no matter how hard you try there’s always something you miss. I honestly don’t know why this didn’t show up on the radar when I originally released this. The problem is very minor and is found in the about, links and archives pages. Seems the code is causing an extra gap in where there shouldn’t be one. Thing is I tried this on two different machines and it didn’t turn up, so I don’t know what the deal is exactly. However please if you’re one of those that is having trouble with your static pages giving you gaps download the upgrade or go to the forums for an explanation.
Over a year ago I went the then newly located to London Rana to an art exhibition by one of my all time favourite designers in the world. The man is seriously brilliant. I later find out that a great deal of the design (mainly logos) for a great number of comics I used to buy as a small kid originated from him. He’s the first designers who’s book I bought without any hesitation (Devices in case you were wondering ). His portfolio can be found at Device Fonts.
So the calanders have been coming in hard and fast. There are two to download. These can be found at Comadivision (from Pixelsurgeon) and at FontFont (via typographica). The second one is of great interest, because they’ve called in some type designers into the fold and the only person that gets 2 months in there was Rian Hughes. Nooch.
This marks the official release of Manji. I released the Preview version a little over 2 weeks ago. I think the preview was a great idea because I got so much feedback of what was broken and where. Somethings I was fully aware of others I was a bit in the dark about, so I’d like to thank everyone who’s downloaded it and said good things about it and used it. I really appreciate all the love.
I’ve sorted out those permalink pages now, so the official Manji download page is www.brokenkode.com/manji as you would generally expect it to be. Could I ask all those who’ve made lists on their sites etc to just point to this location now. I do appologise for the inconvenience but at least now it’ll be easier to find in the future.
Gratitude First things is a big shout out to Alphaoide who’s come into the dev side of things to help me out, since to be completely honest is a godsend, as I’m no coder. He’s been a ROCK and I’d just like to thank him for all the help. If you guys bump into him on the boards or wherever please be sure to thank him as well.
So what’s been fixed? Loads of things, here’s a list:
What’s new?
What about the code? Did you clean it up you lazy bastard? Well once you look under the hood, you see that a lot has been modified:
What’s next? Loads. I’m not as anxious to get the rest of my ideas out there as I was to get this release, mainly because soo many people seemed to be using the template, and I felt that I should give them a more rounded product. I’ve still got Lava Flavoured Manji to release sometime in the future, which is basically a darker version of Manji for everyone that’s not into the white space.
A 1.2 version is still in the works believe it or not, and I’ll probably work on that next (as far as Manji is concerned).
I have one final idea that needs some serious development but I think it’s a pretty neat idea. Alphaoide came up with the name, but I’ll see how much that idea flies and I’ll talk about it more if I think it’s something that would be useful.
I’ve been concentrating the last few days on the design of BK v2. The thing is usually I have the most fun at this stage and really go a bit mental. I’ve already got like 4 designs, but I’m not happy with any of them right now. It’s very strange but I’m having a really hard time deciding the colour scheme of the new site. I’ve had the grays and crimson motif for a while and ideally I’d like something a bit more punchy, something a bit more vibrant, to reflect the mood I’m in right now.
I’ve struggling like I’ve never struggled before actually. The good thing I guess is that when it comes to updating I’ll have gone through several motions that it won’t be hard to update to another design/scheme whatever.
Also for all you people waiting for a Manji update, keep your rss feeders on sometime in the next couple of days as I go live with Manji Version 1.0, think of it as christmas present from me to you. Major post about it closer to the time. If you felt that the preview version was easy to skin, and easy to use, you’re in for a good time with the newest version. Will it be perfect, damn man I’m trying but little things like this and this keep cropping up that throw a monkey wrench into my dream.
Still though I can’t expect it to be perfect first time round. It’ll get there in the end hopefully (with just a little(actually a truckload) help from my friends).
Damn that was painful. Stathi’s in need of a job, so he’s doing what every sane person in his situation would do, apply, apply and then apply some more. I remember those days, and I’ve got to say that I’m seriously feeling for the guy. It’s such an aweful thing to have to go through, but just about everyone goes through it at least once in their lives, so it’s not the end of the world.
He asked me to send him an application form I’d done 3 years ago, thing is it lives on my harddrive on my busted up HP laptop. About 3 months ago the screen died on me after 3 years of loyal service. The computer works, no screen through. So I connected it up to my screen and went about getting that application form. DAMN what a slow piece of shit. How the hell did I last as long as I did????
The good news is I’ve got the application form, makes for some interesting reading, as my thinking and stuff I’d highlight are soo much different. So to all you crazy cats out there struggling trying to get a job good luck and don’t loose hope something will eventually turn up.
That was a pretty good evening actually. Went to my most favourite place in Camden (and currently in all of London as well) Tupello Honey, had some fantastic carrot cake straight from the over, PLENTY of icing on top, and a nice cappuccino. So I’m sitting there with Alfonso and we’re discussing our ‘other’ lives outside the office. See the fonz is a kindred spirit in that sense, he’s got just as much crap going outside of work as me; due to being older however he’s mastered how to deal with a lot of it… I haven’t…yet.
Wrote the list of things to do. I don’t know about everyone else but I’ve write loads of these, sometimes I make a dent in them, othertimes not really. The thing is though, wrote all of them and started prioritizing the items. Strange but everything’s kind of fallen into place. I do know exactly what is required at this point in time for me. It’s very clear to me, at the same time it’s going to be hard to stay on the actual direct line of action I’ve drawn up.
Development of Manji is actually only for tonight. I’m pleased to say 98% of it is complete. In fact I can probably go live pretty soon with version 1.0, however as Alphaoide (more on him later) pointed out, some more work needs to be done in cleaning up the php files, to fit into the theme structure that Ryan Boren has set up through his example of Kubrick.
So the question I have to ask myself is this:
So what’s the problem? Well while the php works fine, there is the problem that it’s not as polished as I would like it to be. This last part can be what’s on for the next stage of development as we get closer to a wordpress 1.3 release. More questions will be asked about the template system and so it will get more clear to me what is required and what is not. Please bear in mind that until 6 months ago I’d never really dealt with php, so I think I’ll need some more time to get my head around it all. It’s damn powerful stuff, and I wish I understood it more but hey I’m going on small overload here, which is why I had asked Root to help me out originally.
Which brings me back to Alphaoide (see told you I’d get back to him). Behind the scenes the man has been an absolute gem. He’s been answering all my dumbass questions and solving all the problems that I’ve had, which has prompted me to ask him if he’d be interested in joining me on my next project. I’ve also asked Chris Davis to join in on this little project as well, which he seems keen on just seems the man’s been pretty busy lately, but I’m hoping he’ll join in as well because I think he’d be great to have on the team.
So what is it I’m talking about you ask? The tentative title of the project (and most of you know that I’m pretty bad when coming up with names), is Shuttle. What is Shuttle? Simply, it’s going to be a brand new spanking interface for the Wordpress Admin Control Panel. I’m sorry Matt, I love you, but the Wordpress interface is something to me that is sorely lacking in style and sometimes functionality. I don’t think there are that many people (except if they’re serious coders and really don’t care what it looks like) that really love the aesthetics of the Wordpress Control Panel.
I’m going to admit something, and that’s the fact that I nearly didn’t go for Wordpress over Textpattern due to the weak interface. What can I say I’m a shallow designer, who places a lot on the actual appearance. What actually kept me was the fact that the Wordpress community was absolutely buzzing. I just had one look at the boards, and knew that if there was a question I needed it would be answered, and that was reassuring, however I’ve never liked the Control Panel, and well I don’t think it’s really on Ryan’s or Matt’s minds right now, so it’s up to the rest of the community to sort it out. That’s where the Shuttle Team come into play.
What’s the ETA on this? Don’t ask silly questions, you won’t get silly answers. To be fair I think it will be at least 2 months down the line, hopefully less, but I’m being realistic about all of this. So why mention all of this now you ask? Well as this is something that is effectively user based I’d really like to hear which plugins, functions whatever you use, used to use or whatever from other blogging systems (just name them) or whatever that you think would be perfectly suited to the admin panel. I’ve created a new section on the boards for this so if anyone has any ideas/thoughts about it please just drop in and give your thoughts.
I’m going to do a little bit of Manji work, and decide tomorrow whether to release it or not. Also Manji has been downloaded over 500 times since it went live 12 days ago. Again thanks to everyone for their interest and support.
Right this is the last post I make regarding Manji until I’ve released version 1.0. There has been development on this. Most of the issues I had have been sorted out to be honest. I had this massive list of around 15 things that I had to go through, that to be honest some of which I noticed after I went live with the preview. I’m kinda glad for this little period because I got to actually see potential problems arising from the various blogs that have been popping up here and there. Don’t think I’m not watching. I’d like to really thank everyone who’s downloaded Manji, talked about it with such kind words on their blogs and who have embrassed it for what it is.
I really want to include everyone’s flavours in the spotlight but I think that would be counter productive. So the gallery is forth coming so that everyone can have their spotlight of sorts.
The official version of Manji will come out towards the end of this week, begining of next week. I’ve also got a couple of other announcements but I need the perverbial ink to dry and contracts to be “signed”. I’ve got to get confirmation that I can talk about these things openly really.
For all those that have customised their blogs already, fear not as I’ll be posting all my changes after a fashion (where I deem it necessary) on the forum that way you can go back into your edited code and change it accordingly. I’ve kept track of everything really so it shouldn’t be much of a problem.
It’s a three point play and Manji is on fire. The latest spotlight is on James' rendition. James is actually one of the beta testers, which is why in the footer he’s got the name Chameleon rather than Manji, but that’s because he has the pre-preview release of it (and you thought I ran into this unprepared). I’ve got to say the man’s excelled himself again. What I love about seeing all these versions is what way they’re actually using the open space provided in the background. Each spotlight so far has taken the background and used it in a different way.
Also one of the things I’m seeing more about is the use of the top space before the post as an area for a static (or changing comment) that puts people in the mood for what they’re about to read. Nice touch that.
I could spot Jame’s style a mile away it’s very unique in all his previous renditions; the computer screen really is his canvas and it’s an honour to have his rendition as part of the Manji family. He hasn’t named it yet so once he does I’ll be sure to update this post.
Does anyone have any nice ideas for a gallery I could set up? I’m not really keen on flickr as the pictures really don’t do the work any justice, or at least that’s my impression. Ideally I’d like something that has a button to show thumbnails and then more details. Fade in and out effects are also welcome.
One last bit of news, I’ve got only the comment box rendition in IE to deal with before I can release Version 1.0 of Manji. There have been several fixes and a couple of new features added, but I’m having trouble sorting it out, soo if you’ve actually worked it out and can make the comment insert box look the same in FF and IE please drop me a line and save me some hours work.
Before anyone gets confused I did say that the downloadable theme is actually a preview. That being said I’ve more or less hammered all the validation and cross-browser issues associated with the theme. It’s been a pretty productive night to be honest. I had nine points I’d jotted down that I needed to go through, now I’m down to 3.
Don’t worry I’ve kept a good track of what changes I’ve made so that all those already gotten into their skinning will be able to pick up some of the points from the previous release and sort out those issues (unless you’ve already sorted them out).
Quick question does anyone know why the hell my 508 validation doesn’t work? I can’t for the life of me sort it out, or understand the criteria, so if anyone can help me out here, that would be really appreciated (also bringing the problems/issues down to 2/9).
Once that’s done I’ve got to actually start thinking about how I’m going to skin broken kode. I’ve been soo preoccupied trying to get Manji off and out I’ve had no time to properly think about it, although I’ve got a couple of ideas,…that’s what the weekend is going to be for…
Now see this is interesting. Basically it’s a javascript you install on your server and link up your header to it. Dumbs everything down so that the way it was coded for a web compliant browser shows up on IE.
The website is courtesy of one Dean Edwards. I would have loved this for version 1.0 of Broken Kode.
Thankfully Manji doesn’t have too many cross-browser glitches. I know full well of 3 of them and I’m trying to resolve them right now. I’ve already sorted out a couple of glitches thanks to the guys on the forum and just general tinkering. If you’ve seen any others just give me a shout on the forums, or e-mail me. I’ve built the index page for the 1.2 version as well, and now it’s a matter of getting all the other pages sorted. Hopefully an alpha version of 1.2 will come out this Sunday as well.
Also I’m going to start spotlighting Manji themes that I come across that make me smile. I’ve already talked about Paul’s This is not a love story, thought I’d include Scott’s Mid-Evil Flavoured Manji .
What I love about it are the colours actually. They’re so muted and yet vibrant at the same time. And while he says he doesn’t like the header I think it gives the entire site a certain painted feeling, tying everything in. Subtle, but he uses all that space given in the default to his advantage. Using his space like an open canvas.
So I’ve been playing around with my ipod this evening, just wasted, literally wasted 3 hours doing nothing but getting pissed off at itunes and firewire cables. Seems the updated software doesn’t work with the ipod I’ve got, and furthermore itunes doesn’t play nice unless I’ve connected my ipod first. Damn that took a while to deal with.
So I thought fine now that that’s sorted let’s try and deal with Manji for v1.2 of wordpress, for the first time wordpress installation didn’t go smoothly on my local machine. Xammp is doing it’s thing, but for some reason the final part of the wordpress installation isn’t going through, therefore the database is sorted but I’ve got no login or password to get in and update, something about the update-config not connecting with something else; yeah as you can tell after 3 hours f$@*ing around with my ipod I’ve got absolutely no patience for software not corporating with me.
I’m nothing if not a really stubborn man, so I’m going to get back in there and hopefully have it cracked tonight.
Update : Yeah it was php 5 interacting with wp1.2.1 hmm I love the wordpress forums.
Man, I’m completely overwhelmed by the response Manji has received so far.
The critics have come back. If this was a movie this post here by Chris would be considered a ‘GLOW REVIEW, THUMBS UP!'. Aaand my head’s just exploded. So I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who’s said really nice things about Manji, I truly appreciate it, honestly it all makes it worth while. I love how the he’s taken the mastheads and put them in the post, just makes them look oh soo much more pro.
At around 15:00 this afternoon (roughly since I checked the number of downloads around then), Manji preview had been downloaded more than 100 times. Again thanks to everyone for their interest. Just want to thank Chris for providing the tools to get a system to actually quantify the downloads, fantastic stuff, thanks Chris.
I would like to try and give a bit more information on the actual design process for Manji. On the 1st of October I contacted Root. I ended that conversation with this:
I’ve come up with a name, which I’m more than willing to change if you’re on board and hate it :). The name I’ve chosen is Manji.Again this is a long shot, but if you’re up for it I think this could be something really cool.
I’m still keen on the own interface idea but I think the WP dev team has done pretty great job in sorting out the theme manager. Now bearing in mind that Root had only seen the previous version of my site, his response was this:
For the next two months Root would work absolutely tirelessly on the template with me. It was one of those amazing moments where I found someone that could match me for the amount of time we would spend on getting the actual design correct. The first Sunday we worked on the template from jpg to working theme (kind of) we must have spent 12 hours straight, and 60 comment posts later.
So from my point of view the man was nothing but an absolute joy to work with. Of course I was aware of what was going on with Micheal but I decided to stay away from that whole thing; in fact this is the first time I discuss it on my blog. I just want to say that I love Kubrick. I think it’s a great design, and I think Micheal has a great writing style. I believe the strength that Wordpress has over other software is the community. It’s the people in it and it’s the main reason I love it so much, and ultimately chose it over other software out there that do more or less the same thing.
Basically from our original e-mails it was originally thought that I would lead this and Root would come into it as and when that was needed. Once I started getting into the code it was pretty apparent that he should take care of that side of things. Root went in and I’d basically ask for something to be done and it would be done before my eyes in the most amazing way. He’d come up against a couple of bricks every once in a while and he’d have the resolution in a few hours at the latest.
I took care of how everything looked and would go in and tweak the spacing the typography, the colours the overall design while Root would make sure it validated and was easy to modify. I really hope I can recreate that level of collaboration in the future with other people.
Reasons behind a Flavouring system comes from the fact that I draw a lot. This also means I take pride in a something after I’ve finished with it and sign it. I think it’s such a saticifying end to a piece of work you slaved over. It’s not always possible on the internet. By naming a tweaked version of a template I think it puts your signature on it. Then show it off at What’s your flavour?
I might have some news on the coding front but I’m going to wait before I make any announcements.
As promised today sees the release of Nebula Flavoured Manji Version 1.0 preview. I do apologise that it’s not the official final 1.0 version but I’ve come to accept that the design on Manji is going to be fluid in nature. I’m pretty confident with this release. Is it perfect? Not yet, but I think given a bit of time it will be as close as possible in this crazy world of cyberspace.
If you would care to sample a small taste of Manji please go to the download page.
Also the Manji forums are open for any help you might need. I’ve already written a couple of questions for the FAQ which should help you guys out initially.
What’s even crazier is that a new Manji flavour has already appeared courtesy of Paul over at This Is Not A Love Story has released Sideshow. Does that make it Sideshow Flavoured Manji? Personally I love the name Nicotine Flavoured Manji.
Hmm that was a pretty good weekend actually. I went to the DesignateOnline Forum meetup on saturday. Seems this is the third time it’s held, and basically it’s a bunch of graphic designers from all over the UK come down to London, talk socialise and generally have a bit of fun, putting faces to names, networking and talking about stuff they all genuinely love to talk about with other people of the same mindset.
It was brilliant. Had a bit of a false start as the main party boys (Aaron really) was a wee bit late. It’s not his fault the man had to come down from Liverpool, while I had to take the Northern Line 30minutes down.
The thing is I didn’t have much expectation really and yet at the end of the night I left having met 11 new great people (I know we were eleven in the end because we kept counting each other as we were travelling on the tube making sure we didn’t loose anyone,…which we did end up doing several times through out the night).
What I loved the most was we could talk about typography and firefox over IE (which I can’t believe is still an issue, there is no issue IE sucks major ass and no longer sets the trend, but rather follows it, long gone are the days where IE was a slick browser, GONE I TELL YOU). If someone said the name Jon Burgerman he wasn’t looked at as a freak. I could say RSS and while some people didn’t know what I was talking about they were damn interested in it.
So to all the guys at the DO forum thanks for a wicked day/evening. Oh yeah and I won the ‘Design a Beermat’ ipod mini competition…which was nice.
The first time I talked about Manji was in this post right here. That was on the 28th of September. The name of the theme changed to Chameleon, however I quickly realised that the name was common in it’s use on the internet for various programs, so I had to rethink my name, and in the end Manji just sounds better.
Manji is a template for the Wordpress blogging software. Effectively it’s a skin for your website, that is easy to modify and while you customise it to your own needs will hold down the fort in style.
One of the first ideas that came to me as I was doing the design was to actually have something called a flavouring system. Since I always intended Manji to have a GPL license, I thought any derivatives could have their own unique name as well, chosen by the person who did the mods. That way people could put their own signature. So when eventually you download the theme and change it around a nice and uniform way of naming would be /“Something” Flavoured Manji.
I originally contact Root (an active member of the Wordpress community and all round CSS and XHTML guru) on whether he would like to work on a template together. I would do the design he would do the coding parts. This was back on 1st of October 2004. At that point in time I’d actually made a draft copy of the final design. I knew it would change significantly but the original thoughts that I had would remain throughout the design.
We talked about the logistics of working in completely different cities (same country) and eventually I set up a secret installation where we begun work in earnest. It became pretty clear to Root earlier on that in terms of coding I was a complete monkey and that he best take over completely from that side of things. The way it would work is that I would draw mock ups in freehand and photoshop and he’d set everything up for me, I’d then go back in and tweak the colours, fonts, text sizes etc.
We completed around 85% of the template before he disappeared off the internet. None of this would have been done without him and so he is credited completely for contributing to the design. I can’t put xhtml and css by Root, because I’ve made a mess of it since he left, if/when he gets back we’ll release an updated version of the template that will incorporate how you’re meant to do code it correctly. Any validation errors you get are of my construction as Root left it validating 100%.
I will admit with Root gone, my motivation and confidence in the project did fall. Thankfully David Prince stepped up for both moral support and helping out with the code whenever he could. Without him I might never having finished what we started. So thanks David.
Reason behind Manji. The reason behind Manji is to provide a template under a GPL license that is both aesthetically pleasing while at the same has valid xhtml and css and is as accessible as possible. I decided to do this because I wanted to give something back to the Wordpress community. I love to support open source projects and this is one that I’m very proud to be a part of. In my mind this is the only way I can contribute to it constructively. The main draw the Wordpress community had/has over other open-source blogging software is the community that surrounds it; at least this is how I came to my decision.
The main idea behind Manji is as simple as it’s mark up. The most important aspect of a blog should first and foremost be the content itself. It should take centre stage. All additional elements can be considered a distraction. The issue is however that these elements are generally useful if they are required. That issue is addressed by having links to these main important aspects right at the top in the navigation section of the template.
I’m also a firm believer in less is more, at least with respect to design. In terms of words I do find it more difficult.
Manji Version 1.0 Beta will go live on Sunday, and I’ll update and tweak it till I get the perfected version 1.0 sometime down the line. Hopefully with feedback and ideas it’ll grow bigger and better. Of course you could just copy the css etc, but have patience and you’ll have everything in a tidy little download in a few short days.
Is about to be live for the final time today. I’m going to be switching to the default Manji theme and Wordpress 1.3, please excuse the mess while I upgrade.
Update: That was a lot easier than I thought to be honest. I’m going to be show casing Manji for the first time right here. I’ll hopefully release a beta version for people on Sunday and as the months go by I’ll eventually get it all out there. To be honest I’m tired of the secrecy, it’s a work in progress I might as well accept this. Two months of preparation are a lot.
Today’s been a strange day as my ego has had a pretty thorough bashing. Started off at work when we had a design review for the over project I’m working on right now, and while that’s not really that bad a thing as my design is pretty good, not perfect by any stretch of the imagination although that’s not entirely my fault. It’s just tough standing there having lived this design for 8 months and for someone to come along and ask you ‘why you didn’t do it another way?’ The thing is I’d have probably thought of it that way, oooo I dunno 5 months ago and honestly can’t remember.
The next point and I really shouldn’t care as much as I do is that fact that ONE lone ranger has voted for me on the beermatt competition. I find that pretty damn depressing to be honest. If really does seem that I’m not in check with the pulse of today’s designer nation. It’s a really blow actually, as I really put a lot into that image. Every single part of it is completely photoshop which I’m pretty proud of.
Don’t get me wrong I feel honoured that I was selected to be one of the final 13, and I did really enjoy participating in the whole competition, but I’ve got to say that it’s pretty demoralising getting one lone vote.
Kind of makes me worried for the future when I release my book, and the biggest fear would be that nothing happens. Nobody cares. It’s a pretty scary thought actually, but I guess I should know better than get sucked into that deal. Some people will go for something, while other people won’t; the creator of any work hasn’t got any say in how the audience reacts.
The good news is that I just packaged Manji as I’m now calling it up for the beta testers. They’ve just got 2 months worth of work, sweat and tears in a 40k zip file. Now if that’s not depressing I don’t know what is. 2 months and all I could show for it is 40k zip file. From one end I suppose that’s a good thing because it means that my site will be able to handle the bandwidth potentially if it’s a popular theme. We’ll see.
Yeah I’ve still not decided on the final name for the template, although I can say that the Beta version is complete. There are some tweaks I’d like to get done and then clean up the code.
The beta testers should be getting an e-mail from me sometime tomorrow I hope. This’ll tell me where it works and where it doesn’t which platform it’s completely borked in, etc.
So the good news is I’ll hopefully be going live with Version 1.0 sometime next week, which is a nice.
The main issue then is how I’m going to skin it for Broken Kode :).
OK people this is a self indulgence issue. I’d love it if you could all go over to this here website address
And if you could vote for my entry. That would be NUMBER ELEVEN. That’s 11. Here’s a picture of the beermatt I designed, now I don’t think I’ll win, but it was pretty good fun coming up with an idea for a beermatt, and it got my creative juices flowing. Erm here’s a picture of the beermatt I designed.
Just in case you were wondering how it’s going, I can happily report that we’re sooo much closer. I say we as I’ve brought David Prince to help me out in the final stages of the project. It’s been a pretty productive week I’ve got to admit. The core pages are all working fine in Firefox and so far so good on the validation front. We’ve got a couple of things to deal with to complete it. I don’t know what kind of numbering system I should be employing for it though. It’s not a 0.1 release since it’s more complete than that, the thing is I can see myself sorting out things in the future. The thing is a 0.1 release implies it’s not finished, when in actual fact it’s not exactly that far off.
Also I think I’ll be changing the name. I’m not sure to what, and I’ll be explaining the reasoning once I’ve actually decided on another name. I’ve been working on this for the past 2 months, and I can finally see the end of the light. So in keeping with the theme I’ll post another section of the cover.
Don’t generally talk about work but for all you boys and girls out there asking yourself, what does this idiot do all day? For the past 8 months my life has been dominated by a single project that I’ve seen from competition to concept to scheme, and now I say goodbye to the Kilburn centre project and we move on to the next project.
It had it’s ups and downs, but in the end from a services point of view we felt like it was our building, we put a lot of effort into our design aspects of the project and here’s hoping it all goes well for the College.
Hopefully I’ll be able to post some pictures of the actual building in a year and a half from now.
So it was Yasmine’s wedding on Saturday. This is wedding number 4 I get invited to this year alone.
Now you might think, well what’s wrong with that, nothing really, it’s a great and momentous occasion, only problem is I’d never been to wedding before this May. I’m 25 years old and things are starting to look a bit different from where I’m sitting. I think this year was a year of realisation:
I’m really not getting any younger. Yes I do need to stretch before I get on the basketball court or suffer the concequences for a good long time. I am also now officially the ‘old’ group on the basketball court as the younger generation come up and take us down. My time as a professional Olympic Gymnast are now over, nooch.
It doesn’t really depress me as such but it puts things in a certain perspective. I’m getting fucking old and sooner rather than later I’ll be doing the same thing.
So here’s to Yasmine and Matt, the bride and groom extrodinaire, one of my dearest friends in the whole wide world, that started off our friendship by slapping me in the face, seems I get that reaction a lot act when I FIRST meet people. In case anyone’s wondering what I did to deserve that slap, all I said was ‘Hello Yasmine, pleased to meet you, I’ve heard a lot about…’'' WAAAAKKK.
About 2 weeks ago I saw a link on pixelsurgeon. It was relating to a promotion Epson were doing for their new range of printers. Basically the idea was for you to put your preferred piece of whatever, drawing/photo/design onto a cd in the resolution they required etc, and they would send you a print of your drawing in the end. I was all over this promotion, the thing is I didn’t expect the results to be as stunning as they turned out to be. I mean this thing is an absolute beauty. I can’t stop looking at it. The colours are exactly like I imagined and put them onto my screen.
I’ll post a picture once it’s framed. The thing is though I’ve decided that I’m going to be getting into the limited edition prints business. Any one of my illustrations will have a limited print run of 10 prints maximum, and no more after that. I say 10 because I doubt I can afford to stock any more than that at any given time. This will also make sure I do one illustration a month. They’ll probably be at A2 size as it really does show off the artwork in the best possible way.
It’s an idea I’ve had for a while now. The reason I haven’t acted on this is that I’ve never seen my digital work printed in large on good paper, except that one time 6 months ago. Iliosnare will go live sooner than I thought.
In Chameleon news, I’m slightly more confident about the final product. I’ve tweaked the size slightly and sorted out the javascript as an original exercise to start with. The list has increased since the last time I thought about it, but baby steps and I’ll get there. And just because I’m a complete tease here’s another snippet of the cover, from a completely different section of it :).
Just noticed I’ve got a load of posts I’ve started and to be honest never got round to finishing them off properly so I’ll finish off them all tonight and start fresh from tomorrow. Right first up a couple of months ago Richie came over, and in the biggest geek session since I was 15 we just surfed the web for anything funny we could find. Since Rich and I share the same sense of humour it was a pretty funny evening all around. Here are a couple of GEMs I found on the net, some in a good way, while some in a not so good way.
Absolutely fantastic stuff. I’ll be spending hours of pointless time on this one. The Camel-Toe Report
Another great one to look out for. TV Ads, Funny TV Ads, Television adverts from Kontraband
On a completely different note this is pretty cool as well. Creative Behavior
Oh yeah like I could resist not posting something about this. The new version of Blender is out, and I swear all the arguments I’ve been having with Francesco regarding the undo system is completely moot now.
Previously in the moving of objects there was NO UNDO. This I felt was a pretty weak aspect of Blender. As you can imagine I was a bit miffed by this, took me a day and I accepted it. Version 2.35 has addressed this and a whole bunch of other issues as well. I’m pretty damn excited in case you hadn’t noticed.
Update: Oops, erm didn’t realise I’d closed the comments, erm if you’d like to add a comment please feel free to :).
Been a pretty productive weekend to be honest. I’ve really hammered through a load of ideas that have been floating in my head for a while now. The good news is that I’ve completed the cover to the Chameleon Manual cover. Here’s a small teaser of it. Just to clarify that’s not the whole image, just a small part of it :).
How’s the development of Chameleon going? Well pretty slowly to be honest, my partner in crime Rootie has gone AWOL for the past week and a half and I can’t seem to get through to him. I hope he’s ok but he’s not answering his e-mails and he’s not posted anything on his blog for a while now. I’ve got the following list of things to do before I can release Version 1.0 of the template:
I’ll hopefully get down and dirty this week to be honest. It’s going to be tough as I’ve got loads of other things that need to be done this week as well.
I went to get measured for Yasmine’s wedding next week. Since I was in the Oxford Circus area I decided to actually walk around and take in the pre-christmas atmosphere. Decided to buy a Mocha from Nero, it was without a doubt one of the worst coffee’s I’ve had in a long while. Expensive and crap, well that’s life, at least that means I won’t be buying something from there for a pretty long time,…if ever again.
I walked in Borders and scoped out the magazine section. Saw the Adbusters magazine and saw a whole bunch of other graphic design mags and illustration mags. 3x3 was something I’d not noticed before. The back cover really made me smile because I recognised the art straight away. It’s the esteemed James Jean. I wondered upstairs to the graphic novel section, dude it’s increased big time, I turn the corner and I counted like 6 people sitting around reading comics. Seriously I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. I’ll be going there some time again maybe striking up a conversation with fellow comic boys and gals, since I don’t really get that chance very often to be honest.
Iliosnare will be going live in a small fashion pretty soon I think. I’ve thought of the bare basic structure to the site and I think it’s about time I did something about it. With the release of Chameleon I think it’ll be about time. Chameleon might have to be postponed for a week or so. I’ve been working on a number of other projects right now and it’s pretty hard to finish all the bits and pieces that I have in mind for the official release. I’ve finished the front cover for the manual though and I’m really happy with that. Yeah there is going to be a manual for the thing, it will come as a pdf and should explain everything that’s needed really, from both a coding point of view and from the architecture and philosophy.
Seems it’s a Wordpress thing to update your site in November. Over at threeoh they host May Reboot, erm every May. It’s a nice way of visiting several websites all launching new interfaces around the same exact time. It makes it into a creative period and helps exposure. There’s bound to be a gem out there that hasn’t been read.
Seriocomic has updated to version 7. Binary Bonsai is apparently going on to version 4. Chameleon is set for a November release, and subsequently Brokenkode will go to version 2 (under wordpress management that is). Sure I’m missing a few people, so if you’re updating your website give us a shout, I’d really love to have a look at what all the creative community is up to.
Damn, I’ve been spending a lot more time learning blender (that animation isn’t mine by the way, off google), and the more I get into it the more impressed I generally am by this application. It’s pretty damn powerful stuff. Once you get past the whole setup really it’s a lovely little program, that’s got all the capabilities of the big boys. Fair enough the way you go about things is pretty strange at first but it does make working faster a possibility once you know all the shortcuts.
Don’t be put off by it’s small size, it’s like 2.43Mb, which is tiny. That’s less than an mp3 song. The development team rewrote the code from the ground up and generally did an awesome job compressing the hell out of it. I’ll be posting some stuff in the not too distant future I’m sure. In the meantime if you want to see what is actually achievable using this program check out the following two sites, blender.org and blender3d.org. The first site is for developers and community and news, while the second is where the gallery is, where you can download the program and the overall front page of the package. Very professional stuff going on there.
Don’t forget to download FireFox Version 1.0 tomorrow. Dude it’s going to be great. Would like to know what the difference between this and the preview version there is because there was a pretty significant change between that and version 0.9.
So the release date is:
So yesterday was a very significant day in the development of Chameleon. We more or less finished it. Rootie put the xhtml tag to check the validation and it came back with ONLY 7 errors the first time out the door. This for me was a massive achievement, as it’s something that was without a doubt 100% Rootie’s doing. If it was down to me we’d be enjoying the coding mess that is brokenkode with it’s 141 errors. Within like 10 minutes that was down to like 1 and now I can say that both the CSS and XHTML validates 100%.
That is a very important milestone to be honest, as Root’s kept to his end of the bargain and provided a rock solid foundation. Sure there’s going to be tweaks but it’s pretty encouraging going into the tweaking stage knowing you comply with web standards.
The thing is now the pressure is on me to make sure the design and the colours are actually working nearly as well as the code itself. This’ll be a busy weekend for graphics and design in casa brokenkode as I go a bit mental with the design. It’s going to be good fun. So when is Chameleon going to be released officially? I’m a natural born optomist and I’d like to say next week, however I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and I’d rather go live when all the ideas we’ve got are completed and will only be revised slightly in the future. That means that ideally next week, however realistically it won’t go live till the week after that. For everyone scratching their heads asking ‘if you’ve completed the design what’s the problem?’ Once you finally get the end result I think you’ll understand why it’ll take another 2 weeks before we release it. I don’t want to say too much right now, but needless to say it’s something unique that I haven’t seen in any templates I’ve downloaded.
A few people have guessed what Chameleon is, so for all those in the dark about a month ago I contacted Rootie over at atthe404 asking him if he would like to join me on this idea I had for a wordpress template that would be slotted in no fuss no huss when Version 1.3 came out. For those scratching their heads asking ‘What the hell is wordpress?’ it’s the system that runs this site. What you think it’s all done by magic? Anyway, we’ve been working on this thing for 2 weeks solid. It’s been arguably one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had on the net. The idea was to have both design and code come together as one. I would worry about how it would look like, and why; while Root concentrated on making sure the code was lean and mean and to the point, and ultimately wasn’t broken.
It was a bit jarring at first working with someone where the only method we’ve decided to communicate with each other was through the development site we set up, however those issues got ironed out very fast. That way we’ve got a complete account of absolutely everything we ever had a problem with. I think when I chose to contact Root (yeah I know his name, but to everyone else he shall remain as the entity known as Root :) ) I couldn’t have imagined how amazing the collaboration actually would be. For a start I’ve got to say I’m a complete obsessive perfectionist. I have to have it perfect to the pixel so that I can be content, and I don’t mind spending the time to get it there. Root matched me hour for hour, and probably a lot more in trying to get this sorted out. The man just doesn’t get tired…ever.
So what does it look like? Hmm I don’t want to give it away just yet but what I will be doing is actually running the default on my site for about 2 weeks after it goes live, and then I’ll be skinning it for BrokenKode appropriately. We’re going to be releasing it under a GPL license, and that’s always been the case.
There are going to be several features that distinguish it and hopefully people will get a kick out of it once we’ve released it officially.
I guess it’s a new chapter for the site as we go into Version 2.0.
Every once in a while I remember why I’m living in London, and what it actually means to live here. I’m walking with Helen out from Angel Tube station and we’re talking about general stuff, mainly where to eat. I say you know what let’s keep walking and see what jumps out at us. At this point I say, oh yeah I’m reading this incredibly engrossing book right now, it’s called ‘The Corporation", at that moment I look to my left and we’re standing at that very moment in front of a cinema with the movie poster for the documentary, and I go " Oh my god, talk about timing". Then I look at the title board of the Cinema and it’s got written:
Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan Lecture 7pm.
Holy Fuck it’s the premiere in London and two of the creators are going to be in the audience. I quickly grab Helen by the wrist and run into the theatre to see if there’s any tickets available. There were 2 left !!!!!!! The guy was holding them in his hand.
What can I say the movie is 2 1/2 hours long. It’s an epic. Is it as well put together as Farenheit 9/11, well I think Moore has had more expereince in these matters and a bigger budget and therefore more people working on it with him, however these guys really know the way forward to starting activism. The movie also ends with Micheal Moore which I thought was brilliant. Some of the stuff in there is amazing footage, that I think people really should sit through and experience.
The Q&A was also amazing to watch. Unfortunately my camera is crap for night photography which means I really need to sort this crap out as soon as possible. Here’s some of the stuff I got from the cinema visit (appart from the book of course).
It’s great research material for the second book I’m working on. I’ve set myself a deadline to complete the notes on my first draft, but it’s also pretty good feeling to know that these guys spent 5-6 years on this thesis of a movie/book and all their hard work paid off in the end. Inspiration to me in more than one way
Some things are just meant to be, this was/is just one of the great things about London.
I bought a book on Sunday after going to watch a set of animation shorts at the London Film Festival (the best out of the lot was without a doubt Lorenzo the cat, sheer genius stuff). We went into Fopp, the only place where it’s guaranteed that I will buy something the second I go in there. Anyway I bought The Corporation.
Believe it or not the actual stupid line at the top of the book (usually by some complete unknown ranting and raving about how good the book is) usually turns me off). Except this time the line held some interest for me, and the design of the book was very good as well. I mean sure it’s pretentous Independent Bollocks, but at least I knew what it was aimed at really. Read the back and the movie has won a whole bunch of awards.
I can say that after reading it for 3 days, it’s a brilliant book. It opens your eyes to what’s going on this world. The nice thing about the book, much like Micheal Moore’s Stupid White Men, is the fact that they include an appendix with all their sources, that are constantly cross-referenced within the book. So if they’re making a claim, guess what? It’s properlly documented and referenced.
It’s a pretty short book. I will write more thorough notes about it once I’ve finished the book. The movie is released on the 29th in England, but check out the website which has got a lot of information.
Man I never thought I’d be as busy as I am right now. A month ago I was actually getting bored. I guess soo many things are happening right now, and I’ve got this drive right now to see a lot of things through. I seem to start a lot of stuff but never see them through, so it’s my goal to complete what I started. The first of these steps is continuing teaching myself Blender. Please don’t laugh.
This is the first attempt at proper 3D I’ve ever done, except with stuff from Swift 3D and Dialux, a bit of Rhino but nothing I can see a bright future with some proper rendering and animation and whatever else that comes my way.
I’ve got some serious learning to do but I’ve convinced that if not next year, the year after that I will get myself one of these awards.
It’ll be interesting where I go with this Blender course. Don’t ask me why I’m drawn to this program. It’s not as user friendly as other 3D programs, but I can see some serious power in this little thing, the community seems rife with imaginative people. I’ve now experienced what it means to be part of an active open-source community, what that actually means and the amazing collaborations you can actually get going. Why do it? I have no idea, but it’s such an amazing feeling. This rambling will make more sense when I finally start bringing details of Chameleon.
Development is going at a breakneck pace. Truely amazing how fast it’s all been going down. You might have noticed that I haven’t really been posting on my blog all that much, the reason behind that is because I’ve been posting on another blog….LOADS.
So anyway just wanted to say, GO WILLIAMS. Thank god we finally won a damn race this year. Couldn’t believe it, soo happy. It’s a real shame we had such a bad year, but as a fan of the team you’ve got to see it through it’s worst and through it’s best. Hopefully the worst is over, and the Aussie duo of Mark Webber and Sam Micheals can take this team to where they deserve.
You are a chameleon; very changeable- as the chameleon changes its hue to that of contiguous objects. “As the chameleon, who is known To have no colours of its own, But borrows from his neighbour’s hue, His white or black, his green or blue.” Change your opinions as a chameleon changes its colour.
Today was the 2nd Annual Comic ‘Festival’ in London. It was shit. And I say this as being the best thing I can actually say about this organized fiasco of a convention. Fair enough this is a small time thing, but you’d expect the Capital of the Anglophone speaking sector of Europe would be able to host a better comic convention. Also they’re a lying bunch of bastards. £5 down due to Grant Morrison pulling out of the actual lecture/interview he was going to have with Jonathan Ross. Jonathan pulled out it would seem last week, and Grant said you know what if he can’t be bothered then neither can I, which I think is a crying shame as I would have loved to see this, I was looking forward to this all month, ever since I found out about it and ever since I read Grant’s Interview in Comic book Scriptwriting. The interview with Grant is unbelievable, the entire book is brilliant but it’s worth it for that interview alone.
Having just completed reading the final book of his New X-Men run, thus completing his tenure in the Marvel Universe I was actually looking forward to seeing this guy up front.
The only good thing I got out of it was meeting Micheal Avon Oeming, who’s a really nice guy. Even drew a naked picture for the big-fat-pervert/typical-fucking-comic-book-geek-giving-us-enthusiasts-a- REALLY-bad-name (and he smelled) of Deena from Powers.
Really weird because I wanted him to draw something cool for me but all I got was a head sketch which to be honest isn’t the worst thing in the world, I just wish that I’d actually asked for Triphammer, would have gotten more detail in the sketch.
Still no one can beat the Mark Buckingham Death Sketch.
I’m pleased to announce that the first PLOT DRAFT of my first book is complete. Yes I know it’s a plot, and it’s the first draft, but it’s 15,000 word plot and I’ve hammered a lot of details in that. It’s editing time, once I’ve got that I’m going to actually start work on the script which should basically take us till the end of the year, which means it’ll have taken me an entire YEAR to finish one script for an original graphic novel.
What’s depressing is that this is the ‘EASY story, as I don’t really have much in terms of research to do. I don’t want to talk about what it’s about just yet because I realise how important it is to get the brief wording of a book correct so that expectation are set correctly, and I’ve not come up with my one liner, yet.
Loads of things to talk about. Thing is I usually don’t like my work travel home with me. It remains in the office and that’s enough unless of course it’s something really exciting as it was with the competition I wrote about on friday. I’ve not been having the best of times at work right now. The pressure has been mounting up and there are certain aspects that are pissing me off more than I’d like to talk about.
What’s funny is that these things really won’t mean all that much in the 3 years, it will be an experience I lived through and am stronger because of it, the only problem is that currently I’m going through it all and it’s pretty crap times all around.
This blog has seriously given me a serious reflection of the year. There are loads and loads of things I really want to talk about and share but ultimately it’s just not the right time. I will start sharing sometime soon no doubt :).
AndreaMosaic. Thought everyone might find this pretty interesting. I’ll be using this in the near future to come up with something to show on the site in the near future. It is pretty cool actually. 4 years ago I was seriously in love with these things, now I guess it’s been done to death, and there’s even programs for it, which kinda takes away the magic but still it’s pretty cool.
So I’ve been having some problems with my brand spanking new screen. Basically for one of my chosen programs it starts doing crazy things with the pixel colourings of it all. It’s pretty crazy stuff and it’s had me completely pissed off and stunned, firing e-mails to Mesh support, who the bastards haven’t gotten back to me, which makes me wonder just how good their support system actually is.
Thankfully I actually kinda found a solution. Basically my graphics card isn’t really all that capable of handling the DVI output from my screen. That means that rather than going from a purely digitial to digital signal I’m actually going to have to go analogue by default. I suppose the good thing is that it’s not all that bad really, I can’t notice the difference really.
The good news is that ‘Manji’ has resumed development and I’ve got a pretty good feeling about this. I’ve got several ideas worked out for the wordpress community as well, although I’m not sure if they’re going to actually go for it. Whatever happens I’ll post my results about that experiment when I get round to it. Way to many things going on right now, and honestly not enough time.
The story is going amazingly. Which I never thought I’d actually say, but I’ve been hitting my 500 words a day, for the past 26 days, which I really think for me is an absolute achievement when it comes to writing a story. It’s actually coming to that stage where I can say that I’ve mapped it out completely, and now I’m ready to start adding the meat to the bones. I might finish the script before the end of the year, which would honestly be a milestone in my life.
This is the third year I fast in London. I’ve been fasting since I was around 12 years old, and it’s basically a part of my life. It cleanses my soul and palette in more ways than one.
I suppose it’s pretty fitting that I should be working on a competition for the charity organisation, Architecture for Humanity. It’s a great little project, basically a small stadium. The stadium is situated in one of the worst stricken areas of AIDS in the world. Believe it or not the entire project needs to be constructed for $5000, which is a feat of it’s own. The below image is my sketch idea for the stadium interior. The entire design team comprises Ana, Sreejit and myself. What’s great about this is that we really feel absolutely fantastic after the fact, even though we’ve spent a good 7 hours working on it solidly, after a good 7.5 hours at work.
I’ll hopefully post some of the sketches I did for this project on Monday or something.
And to a certain extent that’s one of the lessons of Ramadan. Human compassion. Learn for one month a year, learn and understand what it’s like for you to actually be poor. You’ve got absolutely everything in front of you to taste, drink whatever, and yet you can’t even touch it. For those in the dark about these things, fasting is when a person consumes no food or drink [yes including water] from sunrise to sunset.
Happy Ramadan to all those out there in the world.
Soo much to talk about, so much I’d really like to get off my chest but I’m really unbelievably tired right now, that I think it’s better to grab some zees and then start fresh in the morning, got loads of things I need to sort out this week. Damn it’s going to be a terribly busy time for me.
Milan was pretty damn cool. Not so much the actual city as the whole experience, the Italians, the food, the ice cream and the true inspiration that is going to be exploding in all manners of ways. I will be exploring a lot of my hobbies even further right now. Pushing myself to the absolute limit.
Radio silence for the next 5 days. I’ll explain all once I get through everything, needless to say it’s very exciting news. Part of the reason is also that I’ll be in Milan over the weekend, although that has nothing to do with the exciting news. Watch this space though, and yes there’s a reason why the category is Design Nation.
I think it’s time I schooled a few people on what Open Source Code is. Go to this link here , to find out a bit more. This in direct comparison to proprietary software is software that as the name implies has the code that makes it possible open for anyone to modify and add to. The nice thing about this is the fact that it’s free, but as the website says, it’s freedom as in freedom to do whatever you want. You’re not really confined by what someone else has done and what you’ve paid them to give you.
There are downsides and upsides of such scenarios. The thing is I’ve been noticing what I use on a regular basis more and more and a great deal of my software is open source.
And if that’s not enough I use freeware stuff all the time. The absolutely amazing image viewer and small modification xnview. I use the pretty decent picasa from google. For music I use itunes, simply because I generally like the interface. I’ve tried getting into winamp, just really doesn’t do it for me to be honest the fact that I can actually choose the categories in the same way I can with itunes.
I’d be really appreciate it if anyone’s got any really cool software they’ve found on the net that they think should be added to my collection of freeware/open source software.
It’s been a while since I’ve had one of these days. I’ve just completed the pencils of the first drawing I’ve completed in nearly 2 years. When I say drawing I’m talking pencil paper, nothing else, eventually pen and ink, and then if I’m feeling incredibly crazy watercolours as well. That means complete physical tools rather than using my computer.
I’ve got like so many more drawings in me right now that I need some time to get them all done. As posted before the writing is going well. So well in fact that I’ve begun continuing writing my second story. What does that mean? It means I started writing this other story several times and the final draft was around 70 pages into it, and I haven’t actually looked at it in over 4 months. The good thing is I’ve got one hell of a start on that other story, and hopefully I’ll be able to progress it even further. It’s cool to have a structures plan of attack to achieving things, one that might actually work. Damn for a while there I really was this close to packing it in. Thank god for this computer, got me excited about creating again. One I’ll continue in the morning, and the other I’ll tackle in the evening. This way I get somewhere with a story that basically the germs of which starting forming in my head over 2 years ago.
IliosnareDevelopment Notes are being typed, and there is some absolutely amazing stuff coming up from that front. I’ll hopefully be employing Blender for a lot of that which I think will be amazing to do. 3D modelling with an open-source piece of software that can give pro results. I’ll be talking more about Blender in the months to come as I come to grips with the actual program.
Like I said Creative Boom.
Went to the London Aquarium today, and I will say I absolutely fell in love with the Zebra Shark. I’ve got to thank Tracey for agreeing to taking me there and Ru for giving me much amusement throughout the day. It was also nice to have him actively seek Blade of the Immortal Volume 2. It was the easiest thing getting him to buy 100 Bullets and I’m sure it will be something he’ll easily get into straight away. Without a doubt one of the most clever series ever written in any medium.
Hmm, man this year has flown by. I mean maybe the fact that I’m actually documenting this year through this blog I’m actually feeling it pass by faster, but it puts loads of things into perspective, and you can actually see the time ticking away, and having that urge, and need to actually try and complete all these ideas. It’s a seriously interesting time in my house right now as I we’ve got someone new moving in today, and well the begining of the ‘school’ year is completely upon us.
In terms of writing, I know I haven’t written anything about that aspect in a while, mainly because I’ve actually been doing some. I bought a book a few weeks ago called how to learn to write screenplays. The main focus is on movies and television, however the nice thing is that it’s got loads of tips for writing a script of any sort. One of the most amazing pieces of advise I got was to write 500 words a day. No less, if inspiration hits then go on and write some more, but whatever happens FORCE yourself to sit down and write those 500 words. It’s much harder than you think, on the bad days, 500 words seem like an unreachable target, while on a good day 1000 words is too little. Whatever happens the target has to be met. I’ve been doing this for 13 days now, not missed a single session, which I’m pretty happy about actually. I didn’t feel it really but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve got written.
The other bit of advise is how I’ve been going about writing this story, which was ALL wrong. Write the entire plot, get the ideas and the characters fleshed out. Then once the first draft of your pplot is written edit if for a while, tweaking the rubbish and streamlining slightly, and then use this plot to write the script which should be pretty easy by this stage as most of the actual ideas have been taken out of your system. You don’t second guess things because you’ve already been through that process.
I don’t know when I’ll actually have it all finished by but what’s nice is that I can actually see some form of result which is always welcome. The best quote I got is ‘No writer likes to write; however they LOVE to have written.’ which pretty much sums it up really.
I was on site yesterday, I’m working on one of the Academies that the British government hopes to open in the not too distant future. As I was there I really felt the urge that I would love to be a teacher, even for a little while. Just to see that light bulv in kids heads go off would be brilliant to see. Maybe/hopefully some day when I’ve gotten all this writing and drawing and designing completely and utterly out of my system.
It’s been a few days, yes I know, but hey what can I say it’s been unbelievable couple of days. My computer has completely taken my mind away. I know it sounds geeky but to be honest I really could give two shits about whatever anyone says. My computer is my portal to the world, and it’s my tool for creativity. I’ve been waiting for it for 3 weeks solid now, and now that I have it I swear it’s like I’m in love. The reason is very simple: it opens up the roads to creativity and the doors to expression are blown open. I’ve been waiting patiently to begin so many projects that it seems like an eternity, ok maybe 6 months :).
So what does it feel like having a 20 inch screen? I tell you what now that I’ve tried this it’s extremely cramped at work, still stuck on a 1024 x 768 resolution. I can see why many web designers are getting more and more frustrated with the limitations of 800 x 600. So in that little time I’ve redesigned the look of Broken Kode. The template has been changed from ‘Broken’ to Manji, and in contrast to what was stated before it’s Version 0.1.
What is Manji going to be? Well much in the same way that Kubrick has made web logs seem asthetically more pleasing, I’m hoping Manji will do the same only for a different kind of asthetic. Basically one of my pet peeves is that weblogs traditionally look like weblogs. When that happens they traditionally look a bit boring or standard. You’ve got the text on the left hand side, and a few links on the right. Don’t get me wrong there’s a good reason why that’s all there, but I can’t but help that it’s actually rare for anyone to look at the gumph on the side, it’s just my opinion, and as well all know they’re like assholes,….everyone’s got one'. The content should be everything.
Believe it or not Broken Kode is up to version 3 right now, it’s true in less than a year I’ve changed the look of this site 3 times, and I’m at it again. The first time round was my attempt at a three panel type arrangement, and seem waay too cluttered. Got that streamlined, then Moveable Type decided to change it’s licensing and I ditched that template even though I liked it because it was easier to do one from scratch than try and hack that one into a Wordpress equivalent. So we’re now on version 3.
Version 4 is going to come out under a template system, Manji. Everything before was training. I’m going to write most of this stuff from the ground up, so my original estimate of a week is highly optimistic as I’ve got loads of things going on right now. What I can say is that the mock up of the Manji has taken me 3 days, inspiration just hit and I think it’s pretty cool, while keeping very closely with what has been established before. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from Michael and Kubrick, but only in so much as how he’s gone about a few things which I generally like, such as the data at the bottom. I also like the fact that the css is clean. I could do with that, some nice streamline, clean css.
On a completely unrelated note I’d like to wish my brother good luck on the begining of his adventure. His Uni shut down in Greece due to mismanagement. He’s got two options in front of him. Either go down to Lebanon and continue his studies there where he’ll be able to pass on his credits and get a decent degree from a respected Uni in Lebanon. The alternative is to go to LaVerne California, in California, as they realised the remaining students have been screwed, so it’s the least they can do. They put forth their affiliation they should make sure the students can walk away with a degree. It’s an opportunity he didn’t expect when he began at this Uni 2 years ago. Personally I’m not sad for him, I think this could potentially be the best thing to happen to him. Good luck buddy.
P I X E L. Just found this on the net. Thought it was pretty cute. Go check it out, makes for good fun while bumming around waiting for stuff to download etc.
Man, I swear I feel well ashamed of myself. I forgot to say Happy Birthday to my mother today. The really annoying thing is however that I talked to her for a while this morning. Unfortunately we’ve been pre-occupied with my brother’s University shutting down in Athens.
I know I know lame ass excuse. What’s even more annoying is that I was actually thinking about it all of last week, and I’ve been working on her present for the past 2 weeks. I’ve been set back this weekend due to catching the goddamn flu, so yeah I haven’t actually finished the drawing yet. This was going to be the first print that I commercially release and sell on iliosnare. There’s only going to be 10 printed, and No 1 was meant to go to my mother, and I forgot to tell her happy birthday.
I will say this however, she’s told me that mother’s day means a hell of a lot more to her, and I’d never EVER forget that, but I just got completely side tracked between my flu and my bro, which kinda explains a bit of silence in the past few days. Arggghhhhhhhh so ashamed. OK so here it is:
Happy Birthday Mum.
Such an idiot.
Maybe I’m going to go off on one because I’m a bit ill and am not thinking straight but it’s been a while since I checked in with two site, namely the home site for ait-planetlarand Brian Wood’s blog.
Now I have in the past exchanged internet conversations with both gentlemen. I’ve bought a hell of a lot of stuff from Larry Young (head of Ait-planetlar, clever don’t you think, the ait refers to Astronauts In Trouble, the first thing he got published). I like the man’s work ethic in general. I like the fact that he’s got a voice and he does things his way. I like his boldness at the time some what 4 years ago (not sure could be a little less could be a little more) to only publish original graphic novels. Makes more economic sense and he’s proved this countless times be it in a series of posts he did for savantmag, not sure if it exists anymore,….wait hold on,…apparently they’ll be back soon, anyway in his True Facts series of articles. Anyway, it’s all good, his internet persona to professionals could be better as far as I can tell but hey Warren Ellis isn’t exactly an angel when he was online regularly, so much so that even the funny guy on moviepoopshoot would attack Warren’s online persona every week while tell us about the comics of the week.
ANYWAY back to Larry. Like I said I’ve bought stuff from him in the past. The PAST being the operative word. Because as time went by I just noticed something very important, the stuff he was publishing didn’t really have an edge to it, and even if it did, the production values, yes you heard me Larry the PRODUCTION VALUES were sub-par. The cover stock he chooses is flimsy at best. The interior pages are OK, but take a black and white MANGA from Dark Horse and compare the two. Big difference.
Now I don’t really want to touch up on the art, but this is basically what caused me to actually go off on one right now. For the entire time I was hanging out around those boards, his hype machine kept trying to sell me off this artwork as the next coming. ‘This guy is soo great, everyone will be phoning him up once this book comes out’.
BULLSHIT.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that the art is bad, just really completely and utterly unspectacular. I know he’s a business and he has to hype, but brainwashing is just a great thing isn’t it. The minions flock and claim sketches as ‘BEAUTIFUL’. Are they joking!!!!! Here go to this entry right here, and read the damn friggin comments, sickening. It’s like let’s revel in actually sucking each other off. Patting each other on the back. The link is right HERE.
The thing that pisses me off actually is that Oni Press seems to be guilty of this as well. I mean the same scenario, lots of HYPE and not enough substance. Loads of great stuff coming from Oni at some point, now it’s down to a dribble. Hell I haven’t bought an Oni book in like a year. Ever since Cheat. I voiced my opinions on the boards which I’m sure you can find if you’re interested, and that was the last book I bought from them. Guess I’ll have to wait till the next Barry Ween.
Apologies to all those who really don’t give a shit. I don’t really care in so much as it’s such a waste. With solid books like The coffin, Channel Zero, Barry Ween, White Death (I could go on), it’s all gone.
Beautiful, phwe, whatever.
Yesterday I said goodbye to a friend as she heads back to Greece after an all too brief period in London at Kingston University. Originally, one of my school buddy’s girlfriends, she now leaves as one of my buddys and I’m sad to see her go. Sad because she was the only Lebanese (from now on I’ll call us Lebs, so be warned) friend in London. What’s so significant about that? Well to be honest going down the Lebanese sector doesn’t have that same appeal as it does when I’m down there with a fellow Leb. It’s like this feeling of sharing, smiling at the random Arabic being talked around you and remembering simpler days. Take care Rana.
In completely unrelated news, I’ve got the beginnings of a cold and it’s more awful than cold porridge. Can’t even go to sleep right now. Lemsip galore and loads of tissues.
While I’m here I’ll recommend a few movies you should be checking out, bit of a Spielberg hardon at the moment, without even wanting to I’ve seen two of his latest films recently on my new subscription from my local dvd place. The first one I saw was Minority Report. This one was just a really stylish movie. The overall design of the world in the near future and the execution was superb as sci-fi movies go. The characters weren’t all that fleshed out to be honest. The protagonist wasn’t this instantly likeable character, he was pretty generic as good guys go, however the story was generally pretty good, which is a testament really to the core concept that Philip K Dick came up with.
The second movie I caught was Catch me if you can. See this is pretty cool. Just the stuff this guy got up to was pretty amazing, and I will actually say that Leonardo Di Cappuccino did a good job in role. What I found funny was that you couldn’t really tell the difference when he was meant to be 16 in the movie to what he was supposed to be when he was 20, and the guy is like 30!!!!!!! In case you don’t know what it’s about it’s about a con man, and the FBI officer who’s trying to catch him. Will make you smile several times.
Oh yeah should have mentioned this a while ago, David Prince has updated the style of his blog, and it’s much more streamline.
If you combine that with the new Firefox we’re talking BK is being left. I have a few ideas I need to implement for BrokenKode Version 1.1, but I’m keeping it to myself until I get my computer next week sometime, expect lots more on that next Saturday.
So I’ve been playing around with Firefox Version 1.0 for a couple of days, and it’s a major improvement over everything. I can see now why it’s a complete version 1.0. I understand the difference since I’ve been using it since it was still on version 0.6 or thereabouts.
So what are the new things I’ve noticed about it that make it slightl special? Well for a start it’s more informative. When it blocks a pop-up it tells you about it. If you which to hear that Firefox has stopped a pop-up it will flag it up, but not in an obtrusive way. It comes right at the top in red writing over a yellow background. Small little icon to tell you ‘Hey just giving you the heads up’, and I really like that.
The find box is no longer some ugly stupid pop-up, it embedded into the browser window on the bottom, so it’s not something that gets in the way that you have to move out of the way. Again it’s the little things in life.
The themes and extensions sections however are the most powerful stuff around. This is what makes Firefox sing. All these brilliant little tools and ideas found for you to use. Here’s a list of the extensions I use:
Adblock - quite simply, you see a flash ad or a normal ad? Click on it and block it. After a day’s browsing hopefully all the servers where these things come from will have been hidden. Surf without adds, popups or embedded into the actual page. Only content for me.
Gmail Notification - I use gmail if you want an invite tell me I’ve got loads. This little extensions basically has the gmail logo in the bottom of my screen nice and cute with a ( 0 ) or whatever number to tell me how many e-mails I’ve got. If I get a few then hey, bang just double click, got my details saved check my mail.
Foxytunes - I like this. Basically small plugin that connects to any of the music players you’ve got on your machine, loads are listed, and you can control them from your web browser. All the buttons are nice and cute next to my g-mail symbol. If it gets too cluttered I can hide the bar and it’s all good.
Final plugin I’m currently using is Google Preview - Go search in google, when the results come up, next to the search you get a small thumbnail of what the actual site looks like. I mean how many times have you searched for something only after clicking do you realise that it’s a pile of crap and not a pro site or whatever so you end up pressing back?
Do you really need any more reason to stop using Internet Explorer?, FIREFOX 1.0 IS HERE. USE IT DAMMIT.
I’ve been technologically completely in the dark this past year and a half. Usually I make an effort to try and keep up to date with the goings on in technology, and specifically personal technology. One step ahead. I’ve been stuck in a rut for a while now. I mean I only got a digital camera like 1 week ago, and to be honest while it’s good for snappy snaps, that’s really all it does. I’ll have it in my bag all the time for those times that I say damn I wish I had a camera now.
So where am I at technologically right now? Well my computer is dead, so I’ve hunted down and found a brilliant solution in mesh computers, so that’s phase one.
About 2 months ago my earphones died on me. These things have lasted with me for over 4 years so really it was about time. The newest addition to my haven are these pretty funky ones, Sennheiser. They’re german and have a case like those for sunglasses.
Which leaves me thinking about two things really. Personal Music player and Mobile Phone. I’m still stuck on a 2 year old Ericsson that’s had better days, and a Sony mini-disc player. Both running fine, but to be honest that technology has been superseded several times.
So I’ve been looking around for replacements for both. In this first instalment I’ll tackle my mp3 player needs first. There are several contenders from 3 separate companies iRiver, the iPod, and finally Sony. So I decided to do a bit of net research and see what the internet buzz on this topic is.
Well the best quote I got online, at an amazon review was a guy who said very aptly:
People with style get an iPod, people with sense get an iRiver
Iriver has got like 2 different models that are going strong right now. The H100 series and the H300 series. Depending on the storage capacity you add the suffix on the end. 10GB, 20GB and 40GB, yeah very very Ipod I hear you say, this is true, however it seems that the iRiver is one step ahead of the iPod. The 300 series which isn’t exactly cheap or anything comes with a colour TFT screen, so you know that will be the next evolution of the iPod. The amount of stuff it can do is pretty impressive, from play MPGs to the in-built radio to the actual lcd screen on the remote control. I guess the only thing going against the 300 series is predominantly the damn cost and more importantly is that it’s as ugly as sin.
I will say this though, the H100 series does look pretty sweet, but I think I’ll wait for the next version of the H320 series, the next generation hopefully they’ll go back to how their H100 series is loosing.
I haven’t been a gamer in over 8 years, with the exception of Final Fantasy VII, and yet I can’t help but get excited about the PSP. The design of this thing is out of this world. It just looks like something I must have, even though I doubt I’ll be actually be using it all that much, since games are way expensive in my eyes. And since there is no way you can get those particular things cheaper, legally or illegally I doubt I’ll buy one. But damn does it look good. Go have a look here. Oh screw it have a look right here :).
Get FireFox Now! Tell them I sent you there. Man I’m well excited about this. Firefox has transformed my web-browsing experience, and there’s a reason for that. I’m currently using the Noria Extreme skin which is pretty funky. I was using the Mozilla Netscape for a while now, but I need something different.
For the past 2 years, essentially the amount of time I’ve been living in London, I’ve not actually drawn any comic books pages. Sure I’ve done sketches, and I’ve learnt how to use a number of programs to digitally illustrate since then, however the point is I’ve not actually fully drawn a single A3 page since coming back to the UK. At the time I blamed the lack of a drawing table, and then it was the fact that I didn’t have a script and then it was that I was learning other things, all very true, all excuses.
While I was in Greece I opened my folder with previous art, and I sat there looking at paintings I did nearly 3 years ago just after I finished University. What I saw was raw to say the least but I could see where I was going. I could see the passion I’d instilled into those pages. To be honest it depressed the shit out of me.
After 2 years I’ve begun hand drawing again. Pencil, paper, ruler, compasses. Black India Ink. Windsor & Newton equipment. The thing I missed the most out of it, is that excitement of trying to finish the piece. Knowing exactly what the final things is going to look like and having it slowly appear in front of you.
What I’ve missed even more than that is the fact that while you’re drawing the next image pops into your head, and you’ve got that rush to finish so that you can get stuck into the other piece.
What’s also nice is that this has well and truely invigorated my passion for my story. I just needed a graphical angle that made it interesting visually at least. There was something missing in the original piece I did that showed this. You can have a look at what is was tentatively called in this post here. It’s changed. The angle I needed? Alphonse Mucha. Art Nouveau master.
The pieces I’m working on now are going to be great promotional pieces, that I will hopefully make into prints. I’ve just got to find the correct printers and the correct kind of paper for them. It’s an exciting time at Casa Brokenkode.
Oh yeah and I’ve begun development on Iliosnare (although nothing to show on the site yet, I’ll put a more funky holder in the next few days).
Prodigy’s new album, Always outnumbered never outgunned is out after god knows how long, actually it’s been 8 years. 1996 was when Fat of the Land came out. Long time coming boys long time coming, just ordered it, truly makes me wonder why anyone would buy CDs from record stores, the difference in price is unbelievable, like 40% more, what’s all that about?
In other music news, REM’s new album is nearly upon us. Only one month to go before this little puppy is in my hands.
Another fantastic find from our friends over at pixelsurgeon, this time out it’s for this fantastic design outfit operating out of England as far as I can tell called Magnetic North. Check out the link called Imagination, really brilliant, I loved it.
I like Udon. I like their work ethic and I like how they’ve set themselves up. They were originally a rival to Dreamwave Production, but have since grown up a lot. If memory serves me correctly several members of the then fledging DW decided to leave and setup a collective as it were. They became UDON. Now they’re published under the Devil’s Due publishing umbrella.
I will say one thing for Devil’s Due, is that they’ve definitely set themselves up pretty strongly, in terms of the additional people they’ve brought on board.
Udon is a good start, and they’ve got a pretty healthy line of books coming out. Street Fighter, DarkStalkers and Rival Schools. Fair enough they’re all Capcom licensed products, but still the work is good fun, as it should be. The art is true to the video games, I just wish this stuff came out when I was actually really into Street Fighter etc, but hey it’s a nice little reminder of simpler days.
Getting Studio Ice should be a welcome to the DD publishing branch, depending on how successful it actually is, I’m hopeful but not overly. I might check out a comic on the stands.
Finally I’m actually looking forward to CannonBusters. Just seems like another good fun type of book. I know it’ll be a good read as well since one of my favorite writers is helping out. J Torres man. He’s written the Copybook Tales, Sidekicks and Days Like These, and a slew of other books.
Speaking of Sidekicks, man I love that series. Really well put together, one of the best books to come out in a long while, and Takeshi’s art was sublime. I had a quick look at what he’s been doing for marvel, i.e Mary Jane, and I must say the colouring really does ruin his beautiful work. Not only that but the constraints of a monthly book also really shows in the lack of backgrounds. Such a shame as well since he’s such a great talent but due to the fact he’s got to pump out this book at such a fast rate he’s probably rushed his job and you can tell.
Gerry Loader passed away on Saturday 4th of September after a long battle with cancer. I first met Gerry 2 years ago today. I can be that specific because it was during our graduate week when I first joined the company 2 years ago last Thursday.
Gerry was a resident engineer which basically meant that he was onsite making sure our designs were adhered to and that he kicked some ass when they weren’t. As resident engineers go he was top of his class, and whether you liked him or not he, one this you couldn’t deny was that he was one of the best at what he did. I had a great affection for Gerry because he was a character, he had a way about him, and every day he had a new issue or story to deal with. They don’t make them like Gerry anymore. Even though he lived in the Middle East years and years ago he could still remember some of his arabic.
I spent 2 months with Gerry onsite a little over a year ago. He was diagnosed with cancer on Christmas and he lost the battle this September. While towards the end he had loads of tubes all over him and had lost around 20 kilos, I was there the last time he talked to the graduates at the topic he loves. I was the last graduate he had under his wing. He died the year he retired.
This is the second time a personnal friend of mine passes away. It hasn’t quiet hit me yet. I’m perfectly fine with death. It’s part of life. I accept that everyone on this earth has a set time here. Everyone serves a certain amount of time on this world. In the end it’s not about what you’ve collected or the amount of money you’ve amassed, it’s about what you leave behind, it’s about your legacy. Gerry made an impact on the people he worked with, and will forever be the prototype of the resident engineer in my eyes. Here’s to you Gerry.
May you rest in peace Gerry, may you rest in peace.
I’ve got:
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 gmail accounts
waiting for whoever wants them. I’m sure they’ll keep coming because I’ve been seeing them pop up all over the blogosphere. So if you’re interested just drop me a line, at brokenkode@gmail.com and I should be able to hook you up as long as those invites last.
Slowly but surely I’m starting to find more and more hidden treasures on the net. This is one of those. Greyscale.net. Thanks to drunkfoundation for the heads up. Beautiful stuff.
Man I really hate airports. I hate the smell, and hate airlines, and hate those stupid plastic plates and forks, and nylon wrapped food. I hate checking in and I hate collecting my bag.
The thing is I hate all of these things and I didn’t get any of this time round. At least not in the way I expected., no it didn’t go according to plan, in any shape or form. I get to the airport, 2 hours earlier, as the damn ticket asked. I get up to the friggin counter and say ' Excuse me, but I don’t see any flights to Rome, at the time of my ticket.'
The lady behind the counter asks to have a look at my ticket, then after having a look at it she tells me my flight has already left!!!!! What the FUCK????? Is this some kind of joke because tell you what I was not laughing. Anyway turns out the damn flight got moved ahead, and I should have phoned to confirm my flight. The issue is that I don’t actually do that anymore after the damn airlines told me not to do it anymore. So anyway I spend 2 hours on my nerves waiting for an alternative flight, which was via Milan. Not bad, I got there on time.
My mini adventure was not to end there, one more surprise was awaiting me, no baggage was waiting for me. I could go on at how all manner of thoughts ran through my head as I tried to come to grips with the amount of stuff I lost. I even had to wet shave yesterday, which I’ve only ever done once in my life before.
The good news is that everything was in there, and all in tact. I didn’t have to haul anything anywhere, which is nice as well.
The bad news is that I’ve got to try and get some form of financial aid to get my damn computer since it’s going to be a painful exercise to pay for it in one go. The thing is that I was regected from the friggin financial aid by mesh computers because I was living in one place for more than 3 years. Such a shag. I mean seriously it just annoys me that I’ve got a great credit record and yet I can’t get 6 months free interest.
So I’m currently working off my laptop that doesn’t have a screen anymore, and it’s attached to this massive crt screen that takes up like 60% of my table. I’m still doing the number crunching to see if I’ve got enough for this month and the next if I buy the computer flat out.
Man I decided to do a few tweaks to the damn site, 5 hours later I sorted out the slight mods to the css file. This is ridiculous. I’ve seriously got to sort it out so and streamline the damn thing. Make it tight and get it right.
I’ve been looking at various blogs around the place, such as Dunstan’s blog, and noticed that a decent looking blog is all down to the actual details. It’s the attention to detail that elevates a blog or website to the next level and makes it a complete and utter pro job. The thing is though that BrokenKode is barely 3 months old. My computer has finally given up on me of sorts, and I’ve been stuck on a dialup connection for the past 2 and a bit weeks. Fare enough I’ve been busy with a slew of other projects but I do need to try and make an effort to sort out the css on this puppy.
The only way to go about this is to actually try and break it down from the very start and work my way through it all. Taking notes as to what I modified and commenting the code correctly. That way I’ll know what is what straight away.
Along the way I’m going to be installing a slew of new plugins. It’s a task and a half, but I think I’ll thank myself later on when Wordpress 1.3 comes along and I’ll have the nightmare job of upgrading.
Well with the end of the Olympic Games, I think I should bring this section to a close and put my thoughts in review down. It’s pretty hard as I’ve lost my computer essentially and so I’m having to look to my bro’s computer to help me with my computer/internet needs.
On Friday I went to Peristeri to watch the Boxing semi-finals. Out of all the stadia that I saw during the Olympics, of which I saw most of them, not all but at least 70%, the stadium which held the Boxing was pretty aweful. It wasn’t completed, and I later find out that they’re going to bring down one of the walls and then continue building to make it into a football stadium. All the back of house equipment, is there for you to see as you go to the stands. There was no points bar so that you can see who was winning and by how much. The toilets where outside. The event itself was pretty sweet. Saw the Brit Khan, and the Cuban’s were always a joy to watch, unbelievably fast, and slick on their feet.
Yesterday was the most Basketball I’ve seen in my life. I went out on Friday night to this crazy club, anyway got back home aroun 6ish, only to have to wake up by 8:30 to go watch the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th position basketball games. Which was great, because there was a lot of atmosphere in the Stadium, lots of people, my folks loved it. It was only their second event and they both thought the world of it. Helped that Greece was playing and the Stadium was packed. I get back home and watch a bit of the F1, as I dosed off to sleep, 5 hours later I get a phonecall from Stathi who’s asking me if I want to go watch the finals. ‘Fuck it man, let’s go’.
Don’t ask me how he got me in, don’t ask what bullshit stories he told, we were thinking we have a 50% chance of getting in. But there I was watching the small finals. USA vs Lithuania. Absolutely amazing game. We’re talking the craziest 3 point shooting I’ve seen a good long while. Lithunania deserves much much higher than 4th place, but that’s how it played out, which is a crying shame.
So while we’re sitting there (he got his cousin in there as well) he turns around to me (Stathi) and says here’s some tickets to the main stadium. You can either watch the Basketball or the final days of athletics in the main stadium OAKA. We decided to finish watching the USA game and then made a move to the main stadium.
Of all the stadiums this was the only one I hadn’t made a visit to, and this was because it was waay to expensive in my eyes at least, to pay 90 Euros, after having paid 180 Euros on tickets already. I’ve got loads of pictures, however like I said problems with my computer make it hard for me to get them on the site. I’m hunting down for a wordpress plugin to try and make it easy to put photos in one folder and then have the photos appear in a post. I know it exists just wish I didn’t have these problems with my computer. I suppose the only good thing is that I’m going to make a move next week and I’m going to buy my computer.
This Olympic experience couldn’t have been possible without my buddy Stathis, SPS2 Extrodinaire, thanks duderino.
Man I’ve had a couple of pretty long days. My birthday was a crazy affair, nice crazy but one of those situations where I just decided to have a small gathering at my house, and preparations were quick, but it’s becoming an institution in my house to celebrate my birthday, since I generally am in Greece around that time.
My computer screen died on me. Now if it was a desktop then fine I could up and replace it; it’s a laptop. I’m pretty screwed as you can see. Basically in like a week’s time no more, I’ll have a screen hopefully 19' as a minimum, TFT on my desk. I’ll then use my laptop harddrive (even though it’s really dying on me till I decide on a new computer). I’d rather organise the invasion of a small country than choose a damn computer.
Olympic Fever continues, without remorse over in Casa Broken Kode. Went to the Velodrome again and that was pretty funky. Soaked up the Olympic Spirit a bit and talked to a few new people.
Yesterday was brilliant but sad at the same time. Went and watched the Volleyball.
I can’t even begin to describe my disappointment. The Greeks had the game and just threw it away. They had 10,000 supporters cheering them on and they lost the damn game in the fifth set. They lead the 4th set 21 to 12. Bearing in mind they only had to score 4 points to win the game, they lost that set 25 to 23. So basically the americans came back with a running of 13-2 points, absolutely PATHETIC. Good on the american team, what a load of crock from the Greek team.
Once that part of the vening was concluded, around 11ish, it was time to hit the town. It’s changed a bit since I was last here. All of a sudden we’ve got Camden Town in central Athens. I swear it’s unbelievable. If someone had tried to sell me some hash I might have actually thought I was in London again. The freaks were out. The crazies and the overall atmosphere, SCREAMED camden. Very surreal experience but I suppose it just means that Greece and Athens is cosmopolitan for these 2 weeks, lets see if that will continue in the years to come.
So we went up to the rock. The rock is a bit of limestone/marble that exists right in front of the Acropolis. When we were young Stathi and I used to always go up there, chill out for a while and then make our move to a few bars and cafes down in thesio. The special thing about the rock is that it’s got loads of nooks and crannies that you can sit on, and you have a view of the entire Athens in front of view, with the Acropolis lit behind you. It used to be quiet, and peaceful. Where people would go and have conversations, every once in a while some guy would have their guitar, and 9/10 times they would be crap but they’d bring some sort of atmosphere to the setting. Getting up was this steps that was at least 2000 years old, and completely worn down from the centuries.
The rock has changed. I don’t want to seem old about it, but when I was 18 and 19 it just wasn’t that god damned packed. It wasn’t so fucking noisey. It didn’t have 8 guys with their god damn guitars. It didn’t have the junkie/drunk person sleeping in the corner (maybe it did but I don’t remember them :) ) .
The only constant in this life is change.
Today the 23rd of August I will have made a stay of 25 years on this planet. Usually, since I finished University some 3 years ago now I get depressed, BIG TIME. I’ve analysed the situation and come to the reasoning behind it. The reason can be attributed to one thing. It’s not because of fear of growing older, because that’s the way of life, and I accept a lot of things that are the ways of life, very easily, and without any trepidation.
Somethings I have no control over.
Other things however I do. It is these things that I have control over that cause this depression. I’ve never made it a secret that my dream job isn’t what I currently do. I’m an engineer by profession, and my job is designing the electrical systems of buildings. However although I have begun to enjoy my job emmensely, which to be c0mpletely honest can only be attributed to the company I work for ( www.arup.com), there is something still missing.
My dream job is to be a graphic novelist. It’s something that shouldn’t be hard to do. Telling visual stories is something I’ve been wanting to do since I was 14 years old. 11 years have passed, and I can’t say I’m any closer to that goal. I’ve put myself on a tangent, and in the process deviated from the original target.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve enjoyed all the various projects I’ve undertaken in the past 2 years that have in a way kept me away from the main goal, from the programming, to the digital illustration, to the graphic designing, to the web design/architecture. All important aspects to me that I’m very proud of, but they’re not the one true original goal. When I look at the shelf infront of me and see one spine with my name on it, that will be a time where I can die happy. Happy in the knowledge that I was able to achieve that one dream that has been with me and refuses to go away all these years.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is, 25 years, the road is clear in front of me, I have no obligations, but the end is all too far away, and I fear that I won’t have the book finished for next year either, since writing it has been the hardest thing in the world due to the subject matter. The ironic thing is that I choose this story in lieu of all the other ones (because I have many many ideas for stories) because I thought this one would require the least amount of research, and it’d be a much easier story to fall into, ha, such a moron.
The book has got 23 fully written and described pages, complete with dialogue etc. That’s the equivalent of 1 issue. I’m hopping to make the equivalent of a 12 issue mini-series all slotted into one book. In the region of 160 pages. This is the situation I have in front of me on my 25th Birthday.
I guess it’s better than nothing really. At least I’ve finally got a draft I’m happy with the start of (this is version 6 by the way, I began writing this story properly on the 1st of January). Close to 9 months and all I’ve got to show from that part of my life is 23 pages.
So I decided to go to the beach volleyball to try out something new that to be honest I wouldn’t watch under any other circumstance. The thing about the whole situation which I didn’t expect was that is was really good fun.
Once we finally got there, it took us ages after the bus dropped us off to walk to the damn stadium, could have been organised better from a transport point of view, in the blistering heat, we sat down. My ass went on fire, as the seat was like 4000 degrees and no sight of friggin shade anywhere. Must have sweated three buckets since imagine sitting in the sun, August, in Athens, with the temperature at a mild 38 degrees.
The first match we watched was Italy versus Germany. We were rooting for the Italians. No particular reason other than they were more emotional and showed more heart.
One nice addition was that we had crazy dancer girls inbetween sets and they were all great eye candy. There was an atmosphere in the stadium, and there was a great sense of fun even though it was waaay too hot to do anything but stay at home. I’m soo glad I didn’t.
What a day yesterday was. Complete Olympic fever. I went to three events and had the chance to walk around the Olympic Complex. The day started off at 11 in the morning as I went to watch some table tennis. I refer to this as Ping Pong, because that is what is was called throughout my life. Anyway it was pretty cool. Saw the Women’s Semifinals, which were pretty damn amazing, and the Chinese and Singaporian contingency were out in full force. These guys are mad for these athletes. I mean we’re talking autographs and photos and whatever else. They were organised with special T-shirts, it’s a good atmosphere.
Then saw the Men’s doubles Bronze medal final, which was pretty hardcore. The women were fast with spikes and reverses and whatnot, but seriously they had nothing on the men. It came to the stage where it was pretty hard to see the damn ball. Fantastic reflexes.
So I got back home around 3:30 had a bite to eat and I was ready to grab myself a siesta, when I get a ring from my buddy Stathi, I mentioned him earlier in the year in this post. Anyways, he’s the venue manager for the Velodrome. He managed to get some tickets and off I was to get to see what the big fuss about this Santiago Calatrava designed Velodrome was all about. Here are some photos so you can make up your mind about this Olympic Venue. I have one word for it, breathtaking.
Well today was the first event for the Olympics that I go to. Needless to say the experience was actually amazing. The main event of the day for me was the Basketball.
The main people there were Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, Lebron James, Shawn Marrion. The rest of the guys I’ll be honest I wasn’t really aware of. Could possibly be college kids, but damn they did put on a mini-show. Makes me wonder how amazing it might have actually been to have seen the first, and possibly the second Dream Team. Shame that they didn’t take this little tournament as seriously as previous ones. This isn’t a Dream Team by any stretch of the imagination, but it is very cool to watch a few of these guys do some absolutely stupendous dunks, and passes and whatever else comes.
This was an interesting game as well, seeing as Angola nearly won, or at least gave them a run for their money. Condsidering Puerto Rico beat the USA team, makes you wonder if they had better luck were the Angolan team could have gone?
Every once in a while I get a cool idea that I can’t help but get excited about. The current one is my logo. I’ve been inspired by google in how I’m going to approach this little thing. I’ll be playing around with the logo and keep adding and deleting bits and pieces to it as time goes. The thing that will stay the same is the crimson glass sphere. From this post right here I’ve completed two bits that I really did want to get sorted. The first being the logo and then the little graphic around the insert comment.
Quite a strange sight that I hadn’t seen in a while actually. Basically I’m driving to get some shopping done, and this guy on a motorcycle piece of shit is driving like a maniac behind me. I let him pass, only to see him stop maybe 10m in front of me, as far as I could tell to meet his girlfriend, which I’m guessing he was late. He said hello and she pecked him on the lips.
Meanwhile this little old lady was crossing the street. She started doing her cross (Greece is predominantly Greek Orthodox, and is known as being one of the most conservative countries in all of Europe), and then started giving them shit about the display of affection in plain daylight. ‘FOR SHAME’. I’d not seen that in such a while that I couldn’t help but smile and laugh to myself. Different country, different mentality, and I’d forgotten how it works over here, being away for nearly 1 year.
Mediterranean mentality, wonder if these ideas are strong in Spain and Italy, because it’s worse on the remaining parts of the basin…
One of my absolute favorite designers in the past few years is Robert Lindstorm from Sweden, he is Design Chapel. I absolutely love his work, and is someone I actually look up to in terms of what I can achieve and what I can do in the field of design and contemporary illustration.
I wish I had 150 Euros. Check this website out, BLAUGALLERY
Well this domain name has been dormant for like 300 years now, or whatever, so it’s nice to see it’s finally starting to pick up some steam. Shame that he’s put it down for 2005 release, since he talked about this series like 1 year ago, so it’d be a bit of a wait before we get 6 issues of this series. I know it will be worth the wait, it’s just it’s so long since he’s done something that I’m actually pretty excited about this. His work just oozes with fun.
J. Scott Campbell | Official home of Danger Girl & Wildsiderz
Athens 2004. I take it you all saw the opening ceromony yesterday? If you didn’t, you missed. Those are burning rings, in a lake of water. I think the image says it all.
I’m actually excited. I generally really enjoy Jeff’s stuff. It’s full of energy and fun and lot of love has gone into every aspect of the creation of his books. Nothing is more apparent than the truely great fun Danger Girls. Go buy the hardcover or the trade or whatever, it’s Charlie’s Angels done right. His newest series is something different, Wildsiderz. Can’t say the name does anything for me, but the idea that he’s expressed seems like something I’ll be following for sure.
I’ve been walking for 12 months, and breaks were few. I’ve traversed all my surplus energies in an attempt to stay awake. I live on 5 hours of sleep. I try and I try, sometimes with success, othertimes in disaster. I’ve decided some emotions are ill placed and it’s time to pursue other avenues. 8 months of 2004 have passed all too fast. Tonight is the first night of my holiday, and it’s time to make the most out of it.
Broken Kode will have radio silence for a few days. Expect loads of pictures from the new and revitalised Athens.
Just so that I have post of things I need to sort out on this little site. I’m not dying to do them right now, but hey they’re things I have in my mind that need to be dealt with at some point.
Just read this off on peiratikos’s website. This was originally from Steve Lieber’s post.
Here’s my top 11:
Go have a look at the stuff this guy has on his site. It’s brilliant, soft and vibrant. Definitely worth watching. I really like finding treasures like this on the net.
David Lanham
Just checking this post and thought I’d see how I was doing in terms of my actual productivity. Bearing in mind this was actually written on the 3rd of April. That’s 4 months of activity what have I accomplished?
The bad guys - The good guys 3 - 0 websites (kaydo, iliosnare, x) 18 - 0 illustrations 1 - 0 font (iliosnare font 1) 1 - 0 logo (ots) 1 - 0 promotional pdf (iliosnare) 1 - 0 graphic novel script (deliverance)
2 - 1 kaydo will have to wait, iliosnare has got some sketches, and x was brokenkode which is also a running thing but that has been completed.
15 - 10 Originally I decided I was going to draw at least 25 images, and the iliosnare website, before I began sending things out to various magazines and art directors to try and drum up some interest. I’ve done 10 full images, but I guess this part of my things to do list has dropped off really due to the fact that I’ve been a bit engrossed in a few other things.
0 - 1 I have created my first font, iliosnap, a sample of which can be found in this illustration I did.
0 - 1 OTS (Off the Streets) logo was also completed. Whether or not they actually used it I’m really not sure about this.
1 - 0 Hmm seems I didn’t really do this one did I. Might need to start implementing it as much as possible. Need to build the documents for Ilisnare up so that I’ve got all my forms in place and all my stationary as well, build the corporate identity of the collective as it were.
1 - 0 Work has begun again on this book. The name has changed and I’d like to keep it under wraps until I actually get all the legal issues sorted out first, in terms of copyright and trademark. I’ve completed around 15 pages, and while this might not seem much, it’s been a page a day type affair and I’ve tried my best to keep to the schedule. I’m hoping to have the script completed with revisions by the end of the year, including character sketches and designs, to start drawing it properly sometime next year.
So I guess there does seem to be some progress on most fronts. Albeit a bit slow for my liking, the progress I guess has been hindered by the fact that I’ve had to learn how to use wordpress, php. I’ve also learnt Rhino 3D in that time as well, so I guess the 3d element of my work will start coming though sooner rather than later.
Earthsea Just saw this on the scifi channel website. For all those in the dark, this to me was the granddaddy of fantasy novels. I read this before Lord of the Rings, and it was awesome. I’m thinking of reading it again. They’ve got a decent cast there as well. Definitely one for the DVD collection when it eventually comes out.
I’ve got a lot to get off my chest right now.
I’ve been reading Computer Arts for a while now, over 18 months and counting. Recently they had a change of editor-in-chief. Now while the last one Vicki Atkinson wasn’t a babe, she did her job WELL. She kept pushing the design of the magazine forward, she kept the ideas and content fresh, she had a vision and really knew what her audience wanted.
Enter shebag of horror, Gillian Carson. Oh dear, nice to look at, but she’s running the damn magazine into the ground. What’s really frustrating for me is that I renewed my subscription before she came on board, and that means I have to see through a whole year of her rubbish. Man that really hurts, it hurts soo much I refuse to ever buy the magazine as a subscription until she leaves, we get an actual editor worth a damn, and is guaranteed to last the entire tenure of my subscription.
Seriously there is loads and loads of comments about the complete wank the magazine has become under her in the very short 4 months. Here’s a couple:
cover to issue #99 gillian you’ve ruined it
What’s triggered this off is the new issue. 100 issues of Computer Arts, that’s a major thing. You’d think it would be something amazing, instead what do we get? A dvd with demos, a book with tips and tricks ripped from the magazine from the past few months; not even a full version of Vue D’Espirit, and five stock images, worth 1000 quid, MY ASS are those 5 images of people running on the god damn beach worth 1000 quid. If they are actually worth that much, there are some mighty dumbass art directors in this world, with waaay too much time and money on their hands.
The magazine itself doesn’t inspire either. The interview with House is more interested in giving me pictures of the people that work there than their work, which is relegated to a few smaller sections, c’mon, they’re not rock bands that don’t have something visual to show. You want me to know what they look like? Fine do that, but don’t let that take presidence over their work.
The rest is filled with the general gumph, that keeps talking about ‘stunning’ this, ‘fantastic’ that, ‘astonishing’ the other, ‘beautiful’ whatever. It’s getting really old, real quick.
Well how could I not comment about this little fact. It’s basically taken the entire F1 community completely by storm. The reason? Jenson Button has decided to leave BAR to join the one great Williams BMW, in the quest for a World Championship.
It’s completely insane because he seemed very happy and very content with BAR, no one really thought that he would be the second Williams driver, after Webber was confirmed. I mean I was over the moon about Webber, but I think teamed with Button we’ve got one hell of a team next year. Loads to prove from every side. I also hate how people are giving my man Sam Michaels a hard time about his recent Technical Director position. It’s not been great so far but he’ll pull it together for sure. I just want to see how the whole Button leaving thing pans out since BAR are calling foul on the whole situation and ‘technicality’ that Button is leaving because of.
It also seems that BAR seem to not want to take this lying down, check this link. There is an option taken here, and it seems that Button might have to face the music very soon. I guess in the coming days the shit will hit the fan for Button as well. I mean it’s nice to have two solid drivers on the team, but to be honest I’d rather it was under better circumstances. I mean the webber move was nice, Jaguar said thanks for the loyalty Mark, but we completely understand why you’re going. This is not something I’d ideally like to have follow Williams, but it’s not their fault, they saw this as an opportunity when Button came knocking.
In other Williams news, gone is the Walrus. That’s a shame. I’m talking of course about the radical nose the williams FW26 has.
They’ve decided to go back to a traditional nose. Such a shame as it looked amazing, and the most unique nose on the track, without a doubt.
I’ve had the worst day at work in a very very long while. In fact it’s days like this I wish I was a comic book artist, or graphic designer or web designer now rather than an electrical engineer. Everything that could go wrong is, and I’m getting undermined by someone who is checking my work. It’s completely the wrong way to go about it. I suppose I’ve got no one to blame but myself for even thinking about doing the correct thing and helping out again on a project that I could have washed my hands clean of. Morality however prevailed, and I’m stuck where I began again 1 full year ago. Basically I’m going to have to put in some serious overtime in the next few days to try and pull myself out of the shit I’ve landed myself in and hopefully I’ll come out smelling of roses on Monday. It’s going to be pretty tough to be honest, but I’m going to have to really try hard, because I’m not getting that feeling this one guy seems to be giving me.
I’m better than what he’s giving me credit for, and to be honest I’m really hating myself for it. Sunday and Monday are going to be long days again for me, seems like the norm right now for me at least. The thing is he’s not said anything to me directly but I get that feeling, and also a few comments passed my way, as a matter of course.
Also on the proposal I was working all of last weekend for and all of Monday for as well has been retracted through no fault of my own. The problem is that this could have some major reprocussions with the guy I was working on this with. The reason is that he was meant to have checked up on something, which he claims to have done, but the other party seem to think otherwise. If he’s got an e-mail confirming any of this, he’s cleared his name and everyone will be majorly appologetic to us, however if there’s no proof, it could get really ugly. I hope it doesn’t because the guy wasn’t doing this to hurt anyone, quite the contrary he was trying to help the company, but sometimes it can blow up in your face.
Like I said it’s days like this I wish I was doing something else, and not having to worry about this sort of thing.
Our friend Peiratikos (sounds poli greek to me, for those in the dark that means the one who pirates stuff, usually reserved to pirate software sellers, but anyway), has an interesting post on his website about blogging. Some points he raises are interesting, but I must say that as a general statement he might be right. I’ve not been blogging as long as him, I still haven’t done 1 year of this, and so many of my posts really are a complete shambles. The more I do this the more comfortable I’ll get and the more of my character will start showing through no doubt.
The thing is the reason I’m blogging has nothing to do with the reason he’s stating. I’m not really interested in telling people how to do things, or how the world is or whatever. I’m writing this as a personnal diary to myself, that I actually read from time to time to see where I was mentally about things a few months or days ago. I don’t check my web stats to see how many people actually visit the site. This is done for my benefit.
So why do I talk about cinema and comics and music, aren’t I recommending things? Sure I am, but I’ve not actually clicked with someone about these particular topics in nearly 10 years. Sure I’ve got friends that are into their movies and comics and books and music, but I don’t see them very often, or those conversations are far and few inbetween, so I type them here, at the very least I’m talking in my own way without seeming insane about topics I like. These are my thoughts dumped on a completely cheap medium ($8 for a web domain and $50 a year on web hosting isn’t going to break the bank to be honest, and if I really wanted to I could get a hell of a lot cheaper options, so I don’t know who he’s using as his web host company), this is not khaled’s law, you shall obey, these are khaled’s thoughts, if you’re intersting in reading them, great hope you get something out of them.
I guess blogging is something unique to every person. Whether or not is an action of granduer or simply a catharic exercise as it is in my case, that’s the beauty of blogging.
I read a lot of manga. The thing is I’ve been reading manga for a good few years really, well before the recent explosion. Even this girl who was trying to be all cool and had the audacity to call me a geek had a pile of Tuxedo Gin piled next her bed, I couldn’t believe the cheek, ANYWAY I’m loosing the point, the point is that every once in a while a series comes along that takes my mind completely. In recent months that has been Planetes.
So far this series has gotten 3 books from tokyopop and they are all worth every single penny(euro or dollar cent if you want) you pay for them. The characters are exceptionally well put together and it’s all about space in as realistic a fashion as you could get it. No crazy spaceships, just ‘hard science’. As you can see from this site,just manga , there are another 2 more books coming out in November 2004 and February 2005.
The big news is that it’s also been released as an animated series. The info can be found on the icv2 website. It says there are 23 episodes that are going to be released, wonder how many books ultimately will be released and how close the anime is the actual manga?
I have to say that sometimes my mind operates at a much faster rate than my bloggin technique, and manytimes I wish I could download my thoughts directly as they happened, from my mind the instant I think about them and onto the net, that would cause for a lot of noise, but then again the net is filled with noise. I suppose that’s evolution 100 of the natural blogger where his thoughts are brought directly into play from his mind.
Wordpress allows you to post messages by sending an e-mail to an address only you know about. It takes these e-mails and posts them directly on the website, personally I think this is genius if you’re a mobile writer that earns a living as a writer and like to have ideas posted directly .This is the closest you’ll get to have instant bloggin systems at the moment. I believe a similar system is used by Warren Ellis, although I will say this, Warren’s sites usually are on the cutting edge of the internet backbone. He generally pushes the boudaries whenever he can, and is a leader in my eyes of using the web when no one knew how to. The issue however is that Warren has fallen behind. He’s still using 2.66 Moveable Type, and his site is as attractive as a monkey’s ass.
He’s had better, not by much. Also his proper website is pretty poor and never gets updated.
I once read a perfect analogy of the net in it’s early days. Basically think of the net as one big party, where every person has the same level of noise. Microsoft is just as easy to get to as brokenkode, it’s all in a name, they occupy the same space.
I’ve had one hell of a week, it’s been ridiculous at work the last few days, mainly because I’ve been involved with an international architecture competition. This is for the British part of the Antarctic section. It’s basically a call to getting a better designed station for their scientific base in the South pole. So I, without really thinking said that I’d help my buddy on this little lottery ticket of a competition. We’re estimating around 500 plus submissions to this competition will be put forward.
Site Tweak So the weekend and yesterday has been spent exclusively on this report, which explains the lack of blogging time and site tweaks, so in the first day since I’ve finished the site has been tweaked ever so slightly.
I’d like to thank David from Davidblog who gave me the idea to have the small touch at the comments you see below. I’ve also updated the formatting of the Broken Stats section.
Weather I don’t think I’ve ever been soo drenched in my entire life. We are talking unbelievable amounts of water being chucked down. I was stuck at the tube station for at least 30 minutes, then I got bored and decided to venture out, and that was a pretty bad move, and I knew it as well, but to be honest I couldn’t be bothered with the entire situation of waiting like a muppet, and so I didn’t. Wet to the BONE; live and learn I guess.
It’s been a bit crazy the last couple of weeks for me. I’m going back to Greece for the Olympics, so work is pretty hectic to try and actually get as much done before I disappear for a while.
A few points of how the Island(UK) is different to the continent(the rest of the world):
Point 1: Even in this state though I’ve had a few decent nights out, however I can definitely say that I’ll be glad to get back into the mediteranean way of life for these 3 coming weeks. It’s a different kettle of fish over there. England effectively shuts down to it’s bare minimum after 11 o’clock. Oh sure there are places open after that, but they’re not generally where I’d like to be.
There is something to be said about going about when you feel like, and not having any hassle getting back at night, and just enjoying yourself, at your own pace.
Point 2: Why do all the weirdos (except for me of course) have to get onto the god damn nightbus? I’m serious every single idiot gets onto the bus and has to act like a complete idiot, and the decibel levels inside a nightbus are ridiculous. I’m really starting to consider never bothering with nightbuses unless the situation is exceptionally dire really.
Point 3: How many drunk burnouts can you spot in one day? I’ve counted 4. These are people that have completely and utterly given up on life and only experience life through a bottle. Sad really.
Not really sure about this movie. I know the hype around this one has begun, and there are loads of reports about it being pretty poor where story is concerned, and that this is more a Will Smith type affair than an Alex Proyas type movie. Alex Proyas for those in the dark is the supremely talented man behind the original Crow and Dark City. Since those two movies I actually haven’t seen him do anything. I guess this is coming back with a vengance really bringing in a blockbuster of sorts, but I’ve got to say that something about getting Will in there does actually reduce the credebility for me. Call me crazy but I would have loved it more if another unknown actor was put in there instead.
I guess I’ll have to wait and pass judgement when I’ve actually seen the thing. Could be good, could be rubbish, I’m still on the fence about this one, even though I really should be clamouring to watch it.
To be honest it takes a lot more to get me excited about a movie these days, not because I don’t want to get excited about a movie, but because the quality of movie is pretty poor that are being solicited. However we’ve got the below mentioned I, Robot, and there are a few more little things that I do actually want to have a look at.
Batman Begins.
The official movie website is here. Today was the first day of the teaser trailer. It’s AMAZING. Very dark but everything looks right. I’m still not sure about Christian Bale who is Bruce Wayne, but I’m hoping the movie will change my mind. I mean have a look at the batmobile man, it’s completely unreal.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
I like Angelina, I like the look and feel of this movie, it might actually be a really well put together little film, or it could be a complete and utter crock of shit, I’m hopeful as the cast seem to be pretty good.
SIN CITY.
As far as everything goes, this is the ultimate in comic book to movie adaptation. The entire movie is being filmed, PANEL BY PANEL from 3 seperate graphic novels. The dialogue is COMPLETELY in tact. Some of the lighting, and comic book tricks are being mimcked completely. Here’s a small list of the people involved: Josh Hartnett Bruce Willis Jessica Alba Mickey Rourke Quentin Tarantino Robert Rodriguez Benicio Del Toro Jamie King Rosario Dawson Elijah Wood Clive Owen Michael Clarke Duncan
3 Directors, One movie, 3 Graphic Novels. One Sin City. Looks like to be one of my altime favourites and I haven’t even seen it yet, but that’s ok, I’ve already read the script and seen ALL the storyboards…
Hahahahahaha. I’m in love with my site at the moment. It’s been a complete labour of love but I’ve finally got it to the stage that I had in my mind at the very beginning when I began this crazy Wordpress adventure.
The icing on the cake is the ‘Broken Stats’ section which you can find in the control panel. Click on Auspices at the top there and you’ll be transported to the bottom. It’s a small addition but it marks the end of what I had in mind for the site from the begining. I’m probably going to start a sticky post and keep adding to it, which will be the nexus section as I think updating that manually is such a waste of time.
The good news is now I just have a few bits and pieces and cleaning of the code before all is sorted and I can fully concentrate on something else right now. Damn that feels amazing.
Lacuna Coil Official Website
Lacuna Coil, fantastic band from deepest Italy, very gothic, very melodic and very in your face. I really love women singers in rock bands, always have, and if they look any good, that’s just a bonus.
CNN.com - New ‘Star Wars’ movie title revealed - Jul 25, 2004. Out of complete boredom I actually typed in cnn.com and there it was in full glory the actual name of the new Star Wars movie : Episode Three.
Star Wars - Episode III : Revenge of the Sith
I really like it, let’s just hope that the movie is going to actually be worth anything, I’m not scared of the overall look of the movie, I’m just scared friggin George will screw the story and dialogue up once more.
Man the more you get into this wordpress stuff the more you find out just how much stuff people have done for you, and all you need to know is how to make things sing a bit, needless to say I’m enjoying these minor tweaks here and there.
The control panel hasn’t exactly been what I envisioned for it simply because I didn’t know what I could do with it and actually make it useful. So hopefully this should give people a bit of a kick in terms of what is possible if you set your mind to it. Like the post says it’s version 0.1, which means once I can actually be bothered to give the CSS a bit of a creative punch future versions will materialise with more features and better graphic content. Go on click right here, to check it out.
I think with that I’ve cleaned up my index stuff, leaving the css file to clean up and finally start updating the nexus section of this site, which to be honest will be harder that I should think. I don’t want to hand code that, so I’m going to try and find a hack for wordpress that does what I want it to do.
Funny thing is I already have an alternative, it’s just not exactly what I’d like to do, so I’m going to hold back on this little thing till I’m absolutely certain there is no other way.
Warren Ellis Like I said only information that would make me excited and books I’d buy in the future. Well I generally like Warren Ellis’s work, as an internet personality the guy can come off as a complete nob, but then I’ve never met the man, only read what he says online and in interviews, and well the man does sound like a nob. In the past few years I’ve bought quite a few of his projects, not all of them mind you, but a decent amount of them. some of the ones I’ve used are:
Transmetropolitan Planetary Orbiter Come In Alone Stormwatch Authority Atmosphere
Now he’s done a few things that I would like to pick up like Global Frequency, and RED. His Avatar press stuff just looks pretty poor. That style of book really doesn’t do much for me. After picking up Atmosphere, which is about alien abduction I thought no, unless the actual subject interests me and the art inside actually excites me I’m not bothering, just because he’s got a crack idea I won’t be following him wherever, he used to be up there in terms of my loyalty that I knew if he wrote something I’d be up for it because generally he wouldn’t be able to disappoint. However even though he hates it, his best work is usually in the realm of superhero books. He writes them for adults and he writes them well. The nice thing is there are a few things that are pretty cool he’s doing apart from Marvel work. Here’s a pdf of the first 7 pages of his Ocean series from Wildstorm, which looks pretty sweet due to Chris Spouse that I’ll be checking out for sure, Ocean preview. Then there’s Stealth Tribes from Vertigo, I’ll go into more detail later on about this during my best of vertigo panel. He’s got a few more things coming out but I’ve seen no artwork for them, so I wouldn’t know what the deal is, including a series with JH Williams, of Promethea fame so that should be good as well.
So in the future I’ll be looking forward to from Warren ‘Make mine Marvel’: Ultimate Fantastic Four Ultimate Nightmare and Iron Man ! So here are a few images I’ve liberated from cbr:
The article goes over this very briefly here: Warren and Adi on Iron Man. For those wanting to know who Adi is and what he can do, go and check out his website, Adi Granov’s portfolio
Mental note, make sure to sort out my ul, ol and li tags, and learn how to use that god damned exhibit plugin to sort out the images that get posted, also sort out a border that goes round these images would also be nice.
San Diego comic con is up and running and loads of news has been coming out hard and fast these past few hours, which is nice, because loads of people are waiting for this one moment to make a breakout and make some noise.
I’ve decided I’m only going to talk about the news that I actually think is interesting to me and that I think I’ll buy the work from those creators when it finally arrives on the shelves.
IDW Publishing - I really want to support these guys, but to be honest appart from 30 Days of Night, nothing is really grabbing me as that great from them. Fair enough I’d like to give Popbot a go, but it seems a bit too steep in price, and the other license comics seem a bit eh for me, nothing really grabs me like classic comics I’d like to read from them. I guess the only thing I’d try as well is Desperadoes from Marriott, however I haven’t tried the first two series, so when/if I get round to those comics I might check anything new coming out from them.
Get the news about the new ongoing series. Doesn’t really say if it’s going to be monthly or not, but I’ll pick it up after I pick up the trade for Return to Barrow. IDW - 30 Days of Night ongoing series announced
Oni press - There was a time I was such an oni press junkie. Now nothing they do actually means anything to me. I had a few books from them, where honestly it was just pretty poor, and their golden star really fell for me. Queen and Country became a bit too propaganda as Rucka decided to try and get all his political feelings out on paper and it showed. It wasn’t even done in a particularly decent way, my opinion, so I dropped buying the hardcovers, yes I have three hardcovers from this series, the third of which I never got through. This other romantic thing called Cheat, really felt like it was trying to have impact, which to me felt a bit hollow and as though the writer couldn’t be bothered to get on and finish the story, opting to try and be dramatic. Really didn’t work for me to be honest. It was well drawn and had good craft to it, but the story was abismal. So that was probably the last oni press book I’ve bought in a good long while.
So is there something that might get me back, only one guy really and he’s called J.Torres. He’s brilliant, everything he writes I really enjoy. Haven’t read anything by the man in a while, even though I should check out Jason and the Argobots, but I just haven’t seen it in front of me to go and plop down the cash for it. Titans Go! seems a bit not my thing to be honest, but Sidekicks is still one of my fav reads, absolutely love that book to death. So I’ll be checking this little series out for sure I think: Love is a foreign language
Dark Horse Comics - Well I really like most of what Dark Horse does. They’ve been pretty solid, publishing one of my favorite books in the entire world, Blade of the Immortal in case you were wondering; and a slew of other amazing series. So I’m always on the lookout for something new from the guys and gals from Oregeon. A few things have jumped out at me really:
Samurai: Heaven and Hell, by Ron Marz and Luke Ross, in December. A samurai’s true love has been kidnapped and he searches the world to find her. Well I loved The Path by Marz, so I’m pretty happy that we’re getting something that is in that vein without the restrictions that you would expect. So I’ll be waiting for a nice little trade on this little book here.
Hipira: The Little Vampire, by Katsuhiro Otomo and Shinji Kimura, in April. A vampire tries to find his way to Hell, which is like heaven for vampiresTwo words: Katushiro Otomo.
Here’s where you can find the original posts: Comics Continuum Coverage Part 1
Let’s hope some crazy stuff happens like last year.
Watched it last night. Very well put together littl documentary. Lots of food for thought. The thing is as with any media you’ll see it as biased propaganda, but the thing that it shows is how the western world has been subjected to the other side’s propaganda for so long, I think it’s healthy to have a look at the other side of the coin.
The problem is discarding the movie because that’s what you feel it is only. Micheal Moore shows all his sources, reveals where he got his information, which is bloody public knowledge. Anyone anywhere in the world can access most of that information if they really wanted to. If you’ve ever read Stupid White Men, you’ll know that Moore puts all his references in the back of the book, so if you think he’s lying, well go check it for yourself, because guess what, Moore’s done his homework.
For me none of it was particularly shocking as I’m Lebanese and therefore cynical about the motives of the American and British government and the whole fiasco that is the UN. I know it’s all about money, and a complete disregard for humanity, as long as you line your pockets. The whole war on terror, again another scheme that I could see right through, there was nothing there that was new to me.
To me I really couldn’t help but feel ready to cry when I saw the Iraqi woman talking about how her house was blown away, how he family was dispursed and how none of them were milititant but civils. I watched her and seeing as I was listening to her in arabic, even though she said a few words slightly differently, it was pretty much all understandable, she signified the way all arabs the world over feel about the current situation. The frustration in her voice was unbearable. I couldn’t help but think about how Lebanon was destroyed, and now it’s Iraq, and they tried to wrap it in a coat of lies and deceit; and nobody cared enough, all those ignorant assholes that would defend their country’s right to act, I’d like to grab them by the hair and show them these scenes of the little girl completely dismembered so that they can listen to Britney Spears and Kylie, while watching fucking shit TV, feeling all safe now that the terrorists are taken care of.
I was reminded while watching the war ‘or trying hard to avoid the propaganda but couldn’t’, just how much Iraqi lives, are obviously much cheaper than American or British lives, and that truely makes me sick.
You know however that this little movie will get people thinking and you know that it will eventually be followed by other people also willing to show what is being done in their name.
Just updated the site with this very excellent little plugin, it’s a funky idea, in that I get to put any font I want as the main title bar and everyone can see it, which is nice. Information on this plugin can be found right here at Joel Bennet’s site, Huddled Masses.
I mean honestly if I hadn’t moved over to the supreme Wordpress I’d still be stuck with some pretty lackluster html pages, created in Moveable Type, without the absolute SHEER POWER of PHP. So the moral of the story is screw Moveable Type, get with the program, and free your blogging experience.
Update: I think I’ll probably update something every week till I get the final version sorted. I’ve got the control panel to give a bit of a touch up, and the CSS code needs to be cleaned, and of course I’ve got to begin sorting out my nexus section as well. Still a bit of work to go really, but hey it’s getting there, at least it’s fully functional at this moment in time.
With this blog completed, I’ve decided upon and began my next project. It’s time really to buckle down hard and actually try and try and finish my script. The plan is to complete the script by the end of the year. In addition the sketches for the characters, and my general skills should be ready to handle the art side of the book next year sometime. The plan is I write no more than 1 page a day, unless of course I’ve got some really devine inspiration, although for well crafted pages I’d need to give them a day.
Once that page has been completed then I can start doing a few sketches until I finally get a decent amount of work underneath me. Things will have to be put on hold, much like I did when I was actually trying hard to complete this blog project.
For all those that are looking to try and write scripts I’ve got two places you should drop by and have a look at. The first place is this little section at the BBC website, writersroom, which should have all your template needs for word, which is brilliant to be honest, been looking for something like this for a while, so I’m glad it’s all set up for, and I just modify it slightly.
The second is scryptic studios, again a wealth of information and script samples.
I’ve been involved with graphic design and computers and software and programming for the better part of nearly three years now. I think in that time I’ve learnt a hell of a lot, and really expanded my skills in a great number of areas, which ultimately helped me no end at work as well. Having said that I’ve neglected a certain part of my creativity in my attempt to do other things. I’ve neglected my hand drawn art. The stuff that isn’t computer manipulated and drawning using freehand or expression or whatever, the bare basics of me, a sheet of white paper and a pencil. Simple equipment that given time and patience can produce magic in my ideas.
So I think I’m going to have to put a lot of the designing aspects on the backburner, maybe 2 hours a day on design maximum, and then spend the rest of the time on the business of artwork. I miss that feeling of a completed page that I can add in my pile like you wouldn’t believe, and I think it’s time I got that feeling back again.
This is the last thing I actually drew, some parts I’m proud of, others I do actually cringe at; I guess that’s what it means to be hypercritical of your own work really, and not accepting anything as the best, but rather always seeing room for improvement. The title will most definitely change, but for now, it’ll do just fine really.
Also this marks my 100th post for the year.
Man that was really painful actually. To eventually get this site and blog to where I wanted has taken more out of me than I care to admitt. It’s brilliant since it’s something I love, and will no doubt constantly tweak and fiddle with, as is always the case with most internet based projects I get involved with, but damn it’s been a long journey. Hours spent well in the end I think. Place can only get better from here on in.
So officially welcome to Makeshift Ver0.1 and chronicles Ver0.1 . Go on click at the top to find out more.
I will eventually put a plug to all the sites and people that helped me sort this thing out on the wordpress forums.
So why only 90% still you ask? Well about 3% can be attributed to the contact page and starting adding reviews to the nexus section, while the rest is cleaning up the index code and my css file, make it nice and sweet. I know kinda perfectionist and all but KODE IS POETRY as the Wordpress website proudly proclaims.
Update: Just completed all the static pages, and essentially my site, as a running version 0.1, I’ll be doing tweaks for ever but it’s cool to have the first step done and a running blog all sorted out.
I get into the tube station in Camden (london for those in the dark about my whereabouts), I get onto the platform, and to my right is a big pile of sick. I think to myself, ‘Don’t breathe any of the smells, just keep waking’ completely in my own world. All I care about it the fact that the tube isn’t there the second I get onto the platform, after all someone else will take care of that mess, right? Well my train arrives 2 minutes later, but as I’m looking down the platform at my train arriving, I see a black man walking up to the pile of sick with a mop. It’s not a major issue really I’m sure it happens regularly on a friday in the london underground, but I can guarantee it’s a black man 90% of the time cleaning up the gunk, and I think that’s truely awful. The truth of the matter is that, this is the harsh reality of the situation and I can’t help but feel a certain amount of sorrow and disgust.
Rich white girls take on the world, get wasted, puke on the train and everywhere and then the black man makes it right.
We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us.
And yet as far as I can see we exploit in more' sociably acceptable' manners. This point more than anything was hammered to me by a very smart and softly spoken guy at work. He said a line which just made me sit up and think about the society that I am currenly a part of.
The peasants work for the lords. He was saying this in direct reference to the actual land laws in England and this thing called ‘Leasehold’ and ‘Freehold’. All of Westminister is not owned by the people that claim that land. It’s owned by one man, and eventually that land will go back to him. Hell he’s even called Lord Westminister.
The peasants work for the lord. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Let’s see if this works. I’ve got 3 hours before I go to bed. I have one final area of this site I need to use that will finish it off in a capacity. Can I do it while dynamically updating this post to see if indeed I’m hitting my deadline.
I’ve go the below post that claims it will tell me how to make Static WP pages the easy way, shall we see hmm,…yes I think we shall. TechGnome’s World ? Static WP Pages made easy
Update one: Got preoccupied and watched the end half of a documentary of the problems Shell are having. As for the site, well the makeshift are has been updated, although the CSS is not completely there, I’ll try and sort it out before I go bedy bies.
Update two: Pretty pathetic, I’m soo tired. I’ve managed to get the ‘static pages’ to work, which is a major load off my back to be honest, but they don’t have the look I want. Not sure which exact CSS I should be using for this little thing here, so I’ll have to wait till tomorrow, but to be honest that means that sometime during the weekend, my blog design and all is pretty much done, which is pretty scary, took what 1 month and a half to get here, but it’s been one hell of an adventure.
RSS: News Readers
rss feed aggregators are simple programs that store special links found on websites. The idea is that when a website is actually updated these programs are told this and kindly inform you that they have been updated and depending on the type of aggregator you get might and usually gives you a nice summary of what the update is about. If for example you’re subscribed to BBC then expect something new every 10 minutes.
You are the one that controls how often the feed is actually updated, or checks for new updates, so it could be every 10 minutes or every day. I still haven’t decided on the right type of aggregator for me yet.
I’ve been very busy at work, simply because I’ve been more heavily involved with the projects I’m working on. What this does it limits the amount of time I have to do other things, such as updating and completely this blog. It’s getting there I suppose, but still not 100%, I’m thinking it’s about 75% complete which isn’t too bad, since it has changed dramatically, very quickly, but no time for other things, such as learning Blender, and completing my script and the rest of my 25 images so that I can start iliosnare collective afresh. Oh well, patience is a virtue.
Been listening to Zero7 a lot lately, great mello electronica that should be bought by everyone that has a clue. Seriously it’s the best waking up music, since it’s just right on the nerves.
Go out and buy DIGIT I’m really thinking of getting a subsciption to the magazine, but I’m already there with Computer Arts, it’s just that CA has dropped in quailty like you wouldn’t believe and so I’m really not all that keen on the magazine anymore, DIGIT is much more classy as a design mag.
The San Diego Comic Convention is the ultimate anglophone comic book and pop culture gathering in the world. I’ve personally never been but I’ve seen and heard enough about the place to know it would be damn good fun to actually make my way there. Due to the fact that every single professional comic book creator and their dogs go there, it’s a pretty sweet place to actually try and sell your services as a comic book creator, or try to sell your actual comic book. Sometimes we get a success story, most times we don’t.
The reasons for this is really down to the work itself. I don’t think there really are that many comic books out there that I don’t own that I can’t wait to rip through the actual book the second I buy it. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of absolutely fantastic stuff out there, and I fully intend to actually try and review these works of graphic fiction, however I can’t help but feel there is only a handful of stuff that is worth pushing.
Now that the blog project has been completed I can concentrate on my first graphic novel. Trying to tap into all these emotions I had a while back is going to be hard, but I need to think back to the reason I decided to write this story, knowing full well I’m writing this for myself, and not for anyone else, knowing full well the end product might only be read by 20 people, who might all hate it. I suppose it’s getting back to drawing again, and finding my inspiration that will be very difficult as well.
This is my latest creation. That is my font, iliosnap. I used a free copy of Font Creator given with the computer arts magazine, pretty amazing what you can do with freeware and open source coding.
[FLASH]HTTP://www.brokenkode.com/wp-content/images/iliosnap.swf, 568,400 [/FLASH]
Still playing around with the overall design of the site right now. It’s getting there, here’s a list of things I still need to try and sort out:
Fix up that control panel, with all the bells and whistles Update: Sorted version 1.0 of the user control panel. It’s a start really although there are a number of issues that need to be addressed first, but again with time that will get sorted out no doubt.
Sort out a more indepth search facility to include for searching through specific criteria
Make the links in the post more distinct, probably with the use of some sort of image, but this means some serious restructuring of the css file and the index file, and is very time consuming, and prone to some serious phuck ups but at least it will be seriously distinct that this is in fact a link. Update: I’ve already sorted this part out, although if you’re using a rubbish browser, like Internet Explorer you won’t be able to see the link addition in all it’s glory, much like when I eventually get round to the favicon, again you won’t be able to see it in action either. This is the price you pay for supporting IE, go download Firefox and set your browsing free.
Sort out the additional static pages, that aren’t really static at all, except they just show what is going on in general.
Some downloadable wallpaper, and maybe even a mascott for the place.
Wordpress hacks to make my life easier in adding images because currently it’s not all that great an option. Update: Sorted out the addition of images, so now it’s got an integral ftp system within wordpress. To do this I call upon you to go to this link here, Asymptomatic WordPress Hacks
Sort out the preview section of the comments side as well. Update: This section has also been updated as well. I’ll be posting on the wordpress message boards how this is all done really, and all the problems I had to get to this stage. Hey at least that strikes yet another issue that needs to be dealt with; cool.
Paginate the posts Update:Sorted this out for the control panel, still thinking about whether or not I need this little feature for each and every single post as well. I guess I’ll update this as time goes by really.
Add bbedit buttons to the comments area as well. Not the end of the word if it doesn’t happen.
Control Panel version 1.1 This should include sorting out the font size in the page, either large or regular.
Well I’m pretty flattered I got mentioned by Matt. For those in the dark, Matt’s the founding developer of Wordpress, so for me it’s cool. Don’t have a clue how he got the url for the site, but there you go, click here to see the post
He did mention something in the comments however that has me a bit worried, is the site truely slow to load? I ask because I’ve tested it on dial-up connection emmulators, but I’ve only seen my site realtime on broadband connections both at home and work. Are other people also seeing a slow response to the site loading?
Just because people might think I’m over reacting, this hit BBC news as well, that’s how important Frank was to the overall Nottingham atmosphere.
May you rest in peace Frank Robinson AKA Xylophone Man.
BBC NEWS | England | Nottinghamshire | ‘Xylophone man’ dies in hospital
Xylophone Man 1931-2004 06/07/04 - LeftLion Nottingham Articles
So after too long I’ve finally gotten a blog I’m relatively happy with. At this stage it’s like what 70% complete, which really isn’t bad going. I expect that the actual blog will keep adding features and bits and pieces in time, which is pretty nice to see it all coming together. It’s pretty slow progress but to be honest I’m not in that much of a hurry to get it sorted out. I’m enjoying tweaking it at my own pace. Friggin Moveable Type might have screwed most people over but at least I got to see Wordpress and what it can do, or what php can do and achieve that I owe them, and this is open source, it’ll always be developed by the community which is nice.
So what should I be doing now then that my blog has been sorted out to a certain extent? Well the next step I suppose is to try and get that script sorted.
I’m going to also try and get some artwork completed. I’ve got close to 13 more to get to my target. Which is 25 images in total. Then I will keep adding 4 pieces a month.
Start sorting out iliosnare.com which is another major project to tackle. I’ve got a busy few months ahead of me but it’s better to be busy as hell than bored out of your skull.
I’ve been doing a lot of css designing, for the site. As you can see a few links have started to appear at the top of this hear website, but it’ll take another week I expect before there will actually be any content to view.
Once this site is done I can go back to other projects. To be honest the only reason I had to move away from Moveable Type was because there was no future in that particular software, the future for blogs in php, so it’s been a long rod coming, and I have learnt a lot, which I suppose is seriously the point in these situations, as I learn more things I improve myself…too bad it takes to long. Still I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s a great feeling.
Bought a whole bunch of music yesterday. So far Staind, A perfect Circle, Unkle and Zero7, have not dissappointed . Hell I even found Big Dismal and Unloco in HMV, but the problem was they were waaay too expensive, so I’ll probably buy them off the net. Still I did really like going into a store and scrouging around to find the perfect combination of music.
It’s starting out to be a pretty solid month. Greece in the Euro 2004 final against Portugal. Everything is up for grabs, the Greeks could do this. Even though yet again they are the underdog, people are still underestimating them, with 4:1 odds that they will win. I think the Greeks will actually feed off this sort of energy. They will feed off the lack of respect the bookies and many people have slung their way, and the fairytale run might end in victory. I’ll update this post in a few hours once the final result has been decided.
Well it’s been a long time coming, but this post marks the first of July and also my brother’s birthday. He is officially 20 years old, which is just waaay too old, since in my eyes he’s still 12 and 40 kg. I can’t get through to him but I think that has something to do with Greece getting into the FINALS OF EURO 2004!!!!!! I mean that has got to be the success story of the tournament. All biases aside I really believe the guys deserve to win, since they’ve been the underdog the entire way through and it’s a truely amazing achievement to reach where they have. God knows when it will happen again, if ever, but tonight the Greek nation can sleep well in the fact that in the worst case senario they will be the second best team in Europe, having already proven that they are better than the best team in Europe, (that’s if the Portuguese win, home advantage and all that).
In site related news, I’ll hopefully be adding all the bells and whistles to this place as I go along. I’m enjoying this, but I think I’d like to move onto the next project, wordpress has occupied me for a while, and will no doubt keep me busy for a good long while to go, but it’s good to know that I finally have some form of skin for the place, with a number of additions to come.
Oh by the way, if you can’t actually see the new look, then delete your cookies if you’re using firefox…
I’m going to have to write a bit more about this topic at some point, it’s just that I have to write this down, before I get bored of the actual novelty. Basically think about it as if this little program ticking away in the bottom of your tray, collecting information from the various websites, giving you headlines about what the deal is with the world. It’s like an up-to-the-minute newspaper, only it’s all free and you choose which topics you’d ideally like to hear about. It’s pretty extensive and what’s nice is that you learn a lot more about what’s going on with the world without even trying very hard.
So how do you go about it then? Well you’ll need an RSS Aggregator. There are loads of free ones and commercial ones on the market. I’ve done like 1 day’s research and come up with a possible 3 winners, although one does seem miles ahead of the competition in terms of development, the main problem is that it’s got a lot of features but just isn’t laid out as nicely as other ones that don’t have that level of features but win points in other areas.
This will be another updated post for sure.
Also finally set up the blog css file to sort out the overall design of this here blog. It will be a long time coming but I’m pretty excited about finishing it and moving on with my next project, which is to finish the story in one form or another.
Well I’ve finally sorted out the server part, and it is pretty easy really. Once you’ve got XAMPP installed, you’re down to two buttons one to start Apache, Mysql and php while the other is to terminate the actions. Once you’re running the actual server online, then you can start playing around. The files should go within the XAMPP folder in your root directory, ie C/apachefriends/xampp/htdocs/…. whatever you want after that is fail game really. This all really does come into it’s own when you install wordpress as you would install it normally on your actual ftp server, and you can see you tweaks and what not straight away,…which is nice. Configuring and Using the Apache HTTP Web Server on a Windows XP PC
Well this does article does seem to go into a bit of detail in terms of how to configure everything, but it pretty simple to follow, which should help us understand what we’re doing with XAMPP.
The closer I come to my 25th birthday, the more I become aware that time is not on my side in terms of what I would like to achieve in this lifetime and where I want to go. Subsequently I’ve decided to put just about everything else on hold until I finish writing my first draft. It’s going to be hard but without the commitment then I’m not going anywhere. Commit to this particular project first, finish the first part of it in a draft format and then I can start thinking of other things.
So what does this mean in general? Well for a start the development of this blog and accomapanying site is going to be less and less as a defacto. I feel a bit bad because I do love my websites, I take a lot of pride in making them the best they can be, and currently that’s just not going to be the case. As such I’m going to take it easy, maybe a few hours every once in a while, until I finish that story, because to be honest that story is what’s going to last in my mind. This will be an excellent supplement to my work, as more people will understand where I’m going and where I started from, but that is the first step.
I’ve got one design commitment to make and that’s to my friend Yasmine who’s wedding invitations I’ll be designing, but the idea will be that after that I’m commiting to one thing only.
So I think I’ve finally decided on the overall style and content of Broken Kode Version 2.0. It’s not drastically different to version 1.0 in terms of asthetic look, however all the additions that I wanted to integrate into version 1.0 just could not have been implemented.
It truely is amazing just how much more you can accomplish with Wordpress, php and the internet. I suppose this version will go live in a few weeks, and tweaks will go on indefinitely. The other good thing is that if I have a change of heart about how it should look or operate, it’s really not that difficult to implement. I think once version 2.0 is running correctly with all the features I want to run then I’ll make a pact with myself not to get involved in the coding part of the site for a minimum of 6 -8 months, baring Wordpress 1.3 being released, although upgrading shouldn’t really be a problem.
This takes a great deal of time and effort out of me and the problem is that a great number of other issues get put the wayside, and that’s really hurting me creatively. I mean I love this but I need to move on to the next step of actually dealing with other things I’d like to tackle head on.
Writer’s block is a terrible thing and currently I’ve just stagnated on that front. Here’s hoping I actually recover soon and just finish the damn story.
Sure does take a long time for the sky to go completely dark in London. I noticed this on the way back home from Richmond, which is WAAAAY down south from where I live. It’s truely a crazy thing looking out the window on a train at 10:30 in the freezing cold, strange how the temperature decided to drop like 10 degrees, but there I could see the sky clearly and the clouds, it was strange, and what makes things even stranger is the fact that I know that it will be bright at 4:30, that’s like 5 hours away. Strange thing the summer, very strange indeed.
I’ve finally gotten into reading books again. It’s been a while, but currently I’m polishing off The Alcemist, and I must say I understand where all the self help issues it’s branded across come from, although to be honest, it really is a well written book. It’s got a clear message but at the same time it’s educational, even though it’s a fable. I’m not talking about the pure sense like most people interpret the book, but more in the vien that it’s actually teaching me about things I’ve heard a number of times, and yet knew nothing of. Also being an arab, this really does hit a few issues home in a wonderful way.
Just have to wonder how or if Paulo Coehlo actually spent any time in the Arabian Penninsula because he has captured a great many great mannerisms of the Arab people.
As detailed in my previous post about this specific topic I’m learning php. What this has done is opened my eyes to what the web can be. So I’m going to document what I do on my journey to learn php, primarily to sort out my blog. I know it seems like such an ardous task to have a simple blog. The problem here is I’m not one for having anything simple. I like a challenge and to be honest this is one hell of a challenge. A great deal of the work has been done for me to be honest, all I have to do is learn how to actually work through everything. I’m going to be writing these posts as if it’s a tutorial. I will be updating it and tweaking it as time goes by till I get the absolute perfect blog, at least in my eyes alone. The added bonus is that I can then add something else to the list of things I know how to deal with, and in addition, any new aspects that Wordpress brings out, I’ll be able to deal with, since I feel I’ll be doing this blog thing for a while, I’m pretty lucky to have gotten out of the MT mold pretty sharpish and found something that much more powerful.
Right so what do we know about php?
Now why should we care for Wordpress? Well as far as I can tell, it’s possible to actually set up a server on your local machine, regardless of what your actual machine is or what platform you’re using.
Well you’ve got php but all the other gumph that makes up your server also needs to be downloaded. The good thing is that you can download an installer that does all the setup for you and then you can go ahead and customise it to your hearts content. There are a great many installers out there. Personnaly I’ve gone for XAMPP, you can find it right here, XAMPP
After running the exe for this fantastic bit of software, you go to your route directory and you can actually run the server by clicking on the exe from there, remember not to close it but use the stop xampp button for that action.
Right so far so good, to help you along you can even download the documentation for php as well, it’s all there and you can even download it as a windows help file of sort which is very sweet I thought, get it from here, download docs .
And bang you’re now running a server on you machine. So how does this help me exactly with my Wordpress customisation exactly? Well now you can set up your site on your machine and see if things are working without actually upsetting your installation on your site. You check everything, tweak, whatever and then just upload those files, no fuss, knowing full well everything works exactly the way you want it.
Well I decided nearly 2 weeks ago to move away from moveable type. Now while this was something of a drastic move, I knew that sooner or later I would have to do this, since no development was happening past 2.64a that didn’t cost an extortionate amount. So having scoped out all the alternatives as explained in this post here I now needed to learn how to use Wordpress tags, and php. Playing just a bit with it all I’ve learnt a great deal in a very small amount of time. So what I’m writing now my journey through the world of php and wordpress. The idea is to get a resource for all newbies like myself that have to wade through hundreds of post trying to know where to start. I’ll be able to make ‘in hindsight’ type comments and hopefully new people to Wordpress will have a point of reference.
So a new category is created, and a new learning resource is about to be built one brick at a time. Hopefully I’ll have a semblance of mastering php by the end of this ordeal that could very well take 3 months, but then again I’m not really in that much of a hurry.
Just collecting links here and there that I think will help me implement the features I want in this site. It will take a while to get to grips with php, it will take a while to get to grips with Wordpress, but eventually I think it will be something I can be proud of.
Wordpress Hacks: WordPress Wiki - my-hacks.php
Getting started with php: Getting Started with PHP
An introduction to php: An Introduction to PHP
I’ve been thinking a lot about the year that’s passing me by right now, and I’ve got to say it’s been a pretty eventful year. It all started at the tailend of august and seriously has not let down since then. Every month has had something exciting happen to me. I’ve experience a great many things in and around work, I’ve got to know some people a lot better. The downside of all of this is the fact that I’ve not really had the most time to spend on design and art especially or on my story, or on reading, but I guess that’s all to be expected. The real question is will it get worse or will I be able to claw it back to a degree that I’m happy with, and actually churning out stuff. I suppose it doesn’t help that stuff like moving blog and having to learn everything from new again, and having to learn a new computer language can really help me. I’ve also learnt how to use a 3D package, so it’s been a learning month really, just no enough design and writing work.
Right here’s my pact to myself, I will only spend 2 hours, NO MORE on this blog, just doing modifications and maybe some designing in any one evening, and the rest I’ll devote to my story, once I’ve got the script ready then I can actually spend some serious time trying to illustrate it. It’ll be harder than hard, but then again what’s life if it doesn’t have a few challenges.
I’d also like to thank Mike from seriocomic for all his help with the preview hack, once I get around to writing the tutorial for that I’ll be sure to include his name.
You might have noticed how I’ve lost a lot of my actual posts, that’s because I’ve had to do a bit of administrating around the place, and this could take a while until I get everything up and running smoothly again, it’s not too long now, it’s just that life as always is getting in the way. Hopefully I should have everything back up and running in no time, before I actually start adding my own design to the blog and what not.
Update: I’ve put the posts back in one form or another, but to be completely honest this is going to take a while to get everything actually correct from the server side of things. I’ve set it up so that the end person reading the blog can actually see the older posts, but I’m just not happy how they appear on my side, back to wiki, which is the online ‘documentation’ that helps answer people’s questions on anything wordpress related, what’s nice is people can actually contribute to it adding and deleting aspects.
I’ve made the switch to Wordpress. This was not because of anything really other than the fact that this is an entirely php based CMS, or content management system. The advantage is that it’s got some absolutely dynamite features that I’m well impressed by. It will take a while to implement all of them and actually get everything to work properly, but the good news is that this particular system is completely free, under the GNU license which means anyone can distribute this.
So why wordpress rather than the alternatives, and god knows there are a lot of them around. To be honest I did spend the better part of a week actually looking at the alternatives:
textpattern while cool lacked something very simple, a real GNU license, I don’t care what kind of license the guy has, if it’s not completely open source then I’m really not interested, I’m not getting caught out again like MT3, it’s time to actually think about this before you commit. Additionally there just wasn’t the community that Wordpress currently has.
b2evolution I did actually install this and have a play with it. It’s got some features that I’d love in wordpress but there was two things that one it over for wordpress, the first being the fact that I can import everything from MT and secondly the plugins had a seperate tab in the admin area which is pretty important since you can activate or deactivate everything pretty easily without deleting them from the system, or hiding them and loosing them or whatever.
Wordpress is still only on version 1.2 I’m guessing in the coming year there is going to be some serious improvements being brought forward from the incredibly active community involved at wordpress . There are some major wishlists I’d like to have but I’ll talk more about that in the coming months as I get to grip with both wordpress and php which is an incredibly versatile language which is absolutely brilliant.
Just been playing some more with this here little blogging tool and it’s even more amazing than I originally thought. The problem of course is finding out exactly what works and how it goes about doing things, but needless to say it’s MILES more powerful than MT. The best thing this blog could have had was friggin MT screwing themselves over because at the very least I now get to play around with something that is truely powerful and can do just about everything and in the simplest easiest manner. Hell I’ve already updated and imported all my MT entries which were originally blogger entries, and if I remember correctly the last time I did this it was a hell of a lot more painful. The features I’m going to be including on this little blog is going to be well impressive.
Wordpress, I LOVE YOU.
Just wanted to say that the official url for this website is now www.brokenkode.com as you have seen at the top of this site for a while now. I can’t really explain why it’s taken soo long for me to buy the damn domain as it really isn’t all that expensive, it’s just a matter of me getting my finger outta my ass and just buying the bloody thing. I’ll be updating the user panel at the bottom of this page and hopefully bring a proper animated short to iliosnare.com in the very near future that is a little prelude of the website I’ll be designing soon. Things are going at a steady pace for iliosnare, not as fast as I’d like but then again I’m pretty damn slow when it comes to most of these things anyway, as most people that know me have come to realise. I get things done eventually and they are good but it takes me longer than most people care and many times that hurts the perseption of the work itself.
I should not be getting excited but what can I do it’s my inner geek. I know it will be crap. I know it’s going to annoy me no end, but it’s going to be amazing nonetheless, because it will be the end of the most major sci-fi fantasy series ever created, till now, in the future who know, but at this moment little can take away from the old ones, and there’s always something nice about the news one, even though they generally are crap.
Oh yeah and btw this is NOT the official poster, you can see Liam Neeson in the credits, and well a few minor photoshop blunders. However this movie will be coming to a cinema near you on the 25th of May, 2005
Man this year is passing me by too quickly. So much has gone and passed me by in the past 5 months it’s truely amazing. I’ve not had much time to catch my breathe and deal with, when more fresh things come and attack me head on. It does make me wonder how I never noticed before the months pass me by. I guess I’ve never really written a diary/blog before and this does put things into perspective really. I started this blogging 5 months ago, and I’ve matured as a designer a great deal in that time. I’m off to Sarah Morris’s wedding this weekend, yes you heard right, 3 weeks ago I was at Tracey’s engagement, now I’m off to someone’s wedding, in 3 weeks I’m off to another wedding, and if I’d gotten a visa I would have been coming back from Italy seeing Alfonso’s wedding, it’s truely amazing how these things have all come to pass in such a short and small period of time, sometimes I think I can see my life passing before me and having no say about what to do to claw it back. I’ll be updating this place pretty soon, no not a redesign, just small tweaks, actually finish the god damn information page, update the links page, complete the control panel at the bottom of this page, maybe add some more colour to this page, get some cross branding going with iliosnare.com, loads and loads of issues to deal with really. Also update that goddamn page with the friggin categories. I’ll get there, it’s just that my computer was giving me some serious grief in the past few weeks that I just really didn’t have the will power to actually deal with any of these things that I know I have to get done. Hey at least the book is starting to come together.
Since my last update. I guess when you’re busy with stuff I kinda got side tracked and lost my way. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me to be honest. Between work, socialising with people and generally designing and writing I’ve just had no time whatsoever to think about much. I mean first off loved the Monaco GP, what’s also pretty cool is that there are three camps in the office, the Williams team, the Ferrari team and the Mclaren team, and we’re all avid supporters, so I’m really happy with the banter that goes backwards and forwards between everyone when it comes to the day after the GP, like at school when you used to really go for a football team, now it’s more important classy stuff in GP racing. I really do hope that the next GP is just as fun as the Monaco GP to be honest. Finished my first font. It’s based entirely on my handwriting, and it’s called Iliosnap. I’d really like to create a few more fonts, but damn does it take a lot of time and to be honest I really can’t be bothered. I’m going to try and make it more into a comic book font and use it for my book but we’ll see how it goes really. Not much design in the past few weeks, but that’s because I’ve been pretty busy, that will no doubt change at some point when I try and make my move on the world of design and comic books in the not too distant future.
Ha, cool. Downloaded this program which you can find right here. Download the program called WindowBlinds, and Iconpackager, both easy to use simple and free. And presto I’ve got myself an apple mac looking desktop. It’s not so much that it operates like a mac but it feels like one in terms of the overall design which is nice, the sounds are pretty funky and I’ve got a more pleasant computing expereince. I really do recommend you get this little program and then download skins to your heart’s content.
Can’t afford a mac and not really sure I’d want to in the end, but that doesn’t mean my desktop can’t look the part.
In life I’ve been handed an exceptional hand. I’ve got my health and most of the people around me have got their health as well. I’ve got both my parents who are happily married and I’ve got a younger brother. My friends and family around me help me get through life no matter what is thrown my way. Growing up I always wanted an older brother and a younger sister, I got neither of these things, but hey that’s not exactly my fault. When I went to University I met a plethora of people from all sorts of backgrounds. Some I kept in touch with, while others I’ve lost touch and to some degree these people have filled in the gaps left in my sibling
I’ve been thinking about getting a new PC for a long while now. I love my computer it’s a reliable powerhorse of a computer. Very swish little tft screen, and overall does most of the things I chuck at it. However currently the issues I’ve been getting is that well it’s really not cutting the cheese as much as I’d ideally like it to. So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and buy something new. Don’t believe everything they tell you about brands. Currently I’ve been looking everywhere to see what the best option would be and believe it or not I’ve found the Sony Viao to be the most cost effective option, beating both Dell and HP which you’d think would be nice and cheap, not the case. Same exact specs and yet both are around 300 pounds different!!!!! I KNOW crazy. The only problem is that well I’d have to pay the entire thing off from the very first day. That my friend is a small price to pay for something as a saving of over 300 quid. I think I’ll sleep on it a few more days and maybe go to a few stores to see if there’s something similar in an actual shop for less than what I’m going for. Probably but I’d like to actually see this for myself. In other news I’ve been searching thinking about linking to all the actual websites I visit on a regular basis but firefox for some reason doesn’t actually have the link buttons that are part of the crazy setup for movable type, same with the buttons in hotmail., really annoying, if anyone understands what I’m talking about and has actually found a way to get those inline buttons worked out, PLEASE e-mail me and tell me.
The act of writing isn’t terribly difficult. Writing something clever and meaningful that has an impact on the way people think of a story and something you think is actually important and genuine is a completely different subject. I’ve been trying to get back into my writing a little more as I’ve been doing the website design aspect of things a little too much and I think I need to concentrate on something a little more right now. I’ll report on this subject more and closer to me actually getting somewhere. I need to seriously format it and make sure that the internet doesn’t hinder my productivity like it is right now. Montoya didn’t come close to doing anything half decent at the GP yesterday, extremely disappointing GP so far. I guess I’m happy for Renault but the rest of the GP is really starting to get boring to be honest, even though I was well into it this year. Even Sato had a bad one, in fact the only driver I thought made a big splash yesterday was Trulli. What an amazing start, truely brilliant stuff by the man in the begining of the GP, friggin Shuei man, hate that guy.
FINALLY. I mean it’s been too long since Williams actually looked like there were getting anywhere with the new car. I am of course talking about qualifying today in the Barcelona GP. Button collapsed after the pressure on him and he’s starting right at the back, or damn close to it, ie 14th. Sato, whom I like, came in third which is pretty damn good, I do like the japanese, generally very well tempered, nice people. Understated and always trying their absolute hardest to please, so here’s hoping Sato gets somewhere with the BAR. The big news for me however is Mr. Montoya. The man is PISSED at what happened last race, so if anything it should pretty damn impressive to see what he has to say on the race, coming in second is a step in the right direction. I mean these little words from eddie irvine says it all to be honest, go here .
My only problem is that Renault, who I actually really like are second in the constructors championship, and well Ralf is not doing a good job at all. Add to all this the fact that we’ve got no one actually officially at BMW next year and there’s some discontent in the ranks of Williams.
In other crazy F1 news at the back of the Jordan car this year Bahrain has decided to remind everyone that Salvador Dali was born 100 years ago. Wow. Modern legend, truely. I do love the guy’s work. Keep thinking to myself all these punks with photoshop trying to be surealists, don’t have ANYTHING on the man, and the really annoying thing is that someone like Dali would have had a field day with photoshop and a computer.
Weekend is finally here and I can start thinking about what to do with myself over the next couple of days. I have the feeling it’s going to be very productive. I’ve got the drive to actually tackle my next project. I think it’ll be the book. Just sit down and deal with it. I don’t have a lot to go but it’s like taking longer than I’d ideally like it to. I suppose that’s what happens with me I get into a project and don’t let it go until it’s over. Case in point with this website. Taken me like a good 3 weeks to get all the bugs sorted, all the little bits and pieces, I’ve only got something like 3 more pages to design and I’ll be officially done with this site and all I’ll be doing is updating it with blog entries and more links, which to be honest with you I’ve been collecting like a mad man. It’ll be nice to have all these links in one place for everyone to enjoy. New art technique also sorted out, which is nice. I’ll start to share the results at some point in time. It does require a great deal of time and effort to get these things off the ground, but I’m constantly working towards some form of goal.
Life as I see it is one big gamble. From religion to personnal morals I never gamble. It something I see can lead to some serious problems and many people think they can control it, I’ve seen it, and they can’t control it. Once you’re caught into it that’s it, your addictive nature takes the better part of your senses and you’re down a big wad of cash. In this instance I’m not talking about cash, I’m talking about emotions. In life you gamble with your emotions and you hope for the best roll of the dice. You gamble with the trust you put in your friends, you gamble with the love you show someone, you gamble with your feelings. Obviously the alternative is to live like a hermit and not have any human contact whatsoever, and we know how unbearable that would be after 2 days. So what’s the alternative? Trust me if I knew the answer to that question I’d be the happiest man alive. I guess the only way to live life is to know how much emotion to invest in a particular situation, person, country, politics, ANYTHING. You have to strike a balance. So essentially if you’re anything like me you’re fucked. I’m too emotional about things, too trusting in people, too gulible in life. What hurts the most however is that I realise all these things, but that’s what makes me who I am.
As a natural born optimist however I’ve got to see the upside of everything, the glowing aura of the situation, the silver lining within the grey and dim clouds. Some days it’s harder than others, my only consolation at this point in time is to say at least I don’t gamble with money, my emotions and psyche heal after a while, no matter how hard my ego is hurt at the time. It’s the way of life, and some of us handle our ‘losses’ in complete and different ways.
I thought I’d include my favourite poem in all the world here for the world to share. The writer doesn’t know I’m doing this, but I personnally believe this is the best thing he’s ever written. The man in question is Stathis Londos, Greek friend with heavy South African roots. If you need to contact him, do this via me, since he’s less than great about the whole e-mail thing. He called this poem Dream 98, although I think he should rechange that name but that’s not for me to decide really. This one poem spawned me thinking up an entire story which I hope to complete at some point in my life. So without further adieu this is my best bud’s poem, Dream 98:
By Stathis Londos
Right so I finally saw KILL BILL Volume 2 yesterday. Before I continue I’m going to say that this review has major SPOILERS. I’m going to be talking about everything I liked and disliked about the movie in detail, so be warry. If you’ve not had a chance to see it, go somewhere else, come back once you’ve actually seen it. Right now that that’s out of the way let’s get down to the task at hand. Tarantino’s 5th movie. This was completely different to the first one, and yet it was a natural extension. While the first one had the emphasis on style over content, a bombastic romp into every movie tarantino loved watching, his homages to all kinds of cinema coming through, this volume actually felt like a tarantino flick. It had loads of scenes that made you uncomfortable, like in Resevoir dogs and Pulp fiction, and at the same time it had many scenes that made me laugh and smile and came off as very tender moments. The scenes that made me feel the most uncomfortable were the ones of Uma in the coffin. Everything about how that entire scene was shot showed a man who knew how to keep the audience on the edge of their seats even though they KNEW she would come out of it ok, since he tells us right at the very beginning of the movie. That’s what made this movie good, in that everything is spilled out for you and yet you still forget about the girl even though that’s the first thing that he shows you at the beginning of the movie. David Carradine was AMAZING. I used to watch him regularly on the TV series Kung Fu, he was the grasshopper and his master was blind. A disgraced Shaolin Monk he wondered the american wild west, it was a classic TV series, which he tarnished by appearing in the follow up with his ‘son’. Geeze what a load of rubbish. He’s lost some weight and he actually looks brilliant in his black suit. Uma also impressed me no end. The training scenes looked brutal and she carried those off just as well as she did the scenes with her daughter, the crying with Bill, the entire package was done in such a way that I thought this was a worthwhile movie. I got my money’s worth of movie, felt saticfied and can’t wait for Quentin’s next movie, which hopefully shouldn’t take 5 years to come out.
I’ve got theories that I generally share with friends whenever I feel like the conversation is dying down. Sometimes I say things just to get a rise out of people, and other times I genuinely believe what I’m saying to a certain extent. I’ve come to the realisation that I haven’t actually thought up any new theories in a while, strange but true I feel myself regurgitating the same rubbish I used to spew out like 4 years ago, and sometimes even more than that, and I’m getting a bit old for that sort of rubbish to be honest. So from now on I’m going to write my theories down here once in a while and that will be the last time I ever talk about them. Think them through or not and actually write them down in some form. I’ll call them Khaled’s Laws of Bollocks.
God I’m tired. We went to the Basketball challenge today, and I’ve got to say we did better overall this time round considering it was the shortest team that could possibly show up to a 3 on 3 competition. We fared pretty well I thought all things considered and I think it worked well, except for the last game, where it was a massive mismatch with the tall guy, he’s wasn’t so much a guy but more like a giant, I mean this guy was huge. I was having a pretty bad day, headache, and nothing was going in, so I tried to get something back by going for the defensive side of things not letting anyone down from my end in that respect, it’s just that well 3 on 3 is a completely different kettle of fish, and I’m completely out of practice.
To top it all off that asshole smug fuck on their team wacked me in the face, on my nose I could actually feel it crack into place, and I might get some black eyes in the morning, and then he has the audacity to tell me to stop pushing, the guy was playing just as tough as I was, he was just frustrated that I wasn’t letting him out of my sites, easy as he’s had it in the past few games.
Tough couple of days ahead of me at work, seems like sometime I can never get a break. I guess those are the punches you’ve just got to learn to deal with them and keep on ticking.
And I’m in the house. To be honest I was a bit disappointed with myself today as I thought I should be doing stuff since it’s such a nice day here, but truth be told it didn’t feel it was going to last here in London. I guess that’s the problem with British weather, it’s complete unpredictability. So it’s a bit of a wasted day, although yesterday was supremely productive. I guess it’s just as well really, thinking about it I’ve had 2 weekends away from my house, so it’s a nice change of pace to actually stay indoors, even though it’s really nice. If the weather stays like this it’s going to be a good year for basketball, as we’ve been heading down a few tube stops to the ‘local’ basketball court. Spring’s here and everything seems soo much nicer and more hopeful. A complete and utter reguvination of the senses is found with a little bit of sunlight. Watched the formula 1 today. Damn it was well depressing. I mean Ralph really is pretty crap, and it’s time they kicked him out. Some people might argue that the car isn’t delivering but his teammate seems to be getting somewhere even in these conditions, might not be the ideal results but at least they’re podium spots. I suppose the same can be said of Barricello, even with a friggin Ferrari underneath him he still gets 7th place, what a looser.
I really got into Williams last year and there’s something ‘cool’ about the new walrus Beemer F1, sadly the actual interaction between the team and the drivers is soured by the fact that both of them are going to be leaving the team next year, and it’s just ending being a pretty rubbish year for Willaims supports. I just hope they actually get it together in time and start winning some races. We saw a bit of excitement in the first lap as Montoya tried overtaking Shuie, but unfortunately this was a small attempt and after 1 lap Montoya never recovered. Thing is he’s probably looking at Mclaren and what they’re doing and thinking to himself, ‘shit what have I done. I’m going there’. See as bad as it is to be a Williams fan right now, it’s even worse being a Mclaren fan. Always a silver lining. For some funny comments by Jaun Pablo, go to these two pages, here and here. I especially loved the very final comments made in the second page, too funny, shame I missed it I was soo pissed off, but not half as pissed off as Juan obviously was. That’s why I guess people like Juan, because he just says his mind, he’s not trying to be diplomatic about the situation, he’s annoyed he lost the championship last year, he’s annoyed his car isn’t up to speed, he’s annoyed he hasn’t been able to get a win, and friggin Ferrari have scored 4.
Yes I’ve changed the design AGAIN, in that respect I guess I’m an architect, however I think you’ll find that as I keep adding to this place it’ll be a much more pleasant journey from start to finish. This is a BETA version, so by no means finished. Give it a few more days and it should get there. So what I’ll probably do is try and post an edit on this section every time there’s something relatively new. To be honest I usually don’t do this, usually I’d like to have it finished in some way, but Im pretty excited about this design, since it’s simple but looks pretty pro from the outset so it can only get better from now on in my humble opinion.
So after god knows how long, actually probably something like 3 weeks I finally did a bit of designing, other than for this blog. I’ve still got loads of little things I need to sort out for this blog, but I’m working on that as well. Just completed a logo for a charity organisation for a friend. He’s a good guy, heart in the right place, very strick views about things but he means well. I promised this 3 weeks ago, so I think he’ll be happy to actually see it. I’ll be doing a few posters using it. This is just the logo, I think 2 illustrations to accompany it should be enough.
Well went to Cheltenham this weekend. That’s two weekends outside London in a row. I’ve got a trip to Newbury and a trip to Italy and a trip to Southampton planned in the near future, Wales sometime in June. Man, busy and expensive couple of months ahead of me. The countryside road trip was very good fun, and it was genuinely nice to try and get out of London again. I’ve been enjoying these mini trips. Unfortunately there is no time for all the other things I’ve got to do in order to actually get anywhere in my mind and with my life.
I’ve got loads of things on my plate right now, and I’d really like to try and complete some of them. So far all I’ve accomplished really is strarting projects and not really taking them to the next level which is very annoying for someone like me. I think as of this week I’m going to actually try and get things done and sorted. I’ve got a few days with extra time so I shouldn’t really have much trouble trying and sorting them out.
I’m going to finish redesigning this place again, I’ve learnt a few tricks and this was a good test of what I can do with css and mt so now it’s time to make something really special. Hard I know but it’ll be damn good fun when it’s over. I think it’s good to try new things.
Today I’ll be honest, it’s been less than productive. Be it at work, or at home or whatever. Seriously the only good thing is I got a haircut, it was getting pretty bad and all it took was seriously 20 minutes of my time if that, 20 minutes, and I kept putting it off again and again, I guess I’ve had some pretty RUBBISH experiences at hairdressers that I really tend to shy away from them. Just don’t feel particularly comfortable in the places to be honest, but this place just sorted me out nice and simple and fast and affordable.
Man I really want to love my blog design but I can’t lie, it hasn’t really grown on me. It’s ok in parts but nothing really special. It took me a while and I had fun but I think I’m going to try something a bit more special. I’ve been doing some work on my iliosnare website. That’s going to be a kick ass website. I think the logo has given me a boost in terms of where I’m going. I’m going to create something special in the following weeks to come.
Tomorrow I’ll be in Cheltnham, hmm no work done tomorrow that’s for sure.
Loads of reading to get done though. Three blogs I’d like to write stuff in, or at least 3 categories, all very very diverse in what they talk about, one animation website, with the wee character in the top right hand corner as one of the main guys, iliosnare.com and a few logos and a graphic novel, and 17 drawings. 3 I can see clearly in my mind. Hmm I’m being beaten here, but I knew I didn’t have much of a chance these few weeks due to life getting in the way in general.
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Got a few ideas in my head right now, at least 7 drawings I’d like to start, all with my new vector style. Eventually I’ll start developing a new style with my 3D programs, it’s just that my hardware right now isn’t really up to the task. As such I’ll be using my laptop for a little while longer. 7 drawings clear in my mind.
Been a while since I mentioned my book. Absolutely no progress right now, I’ve been too busy with other things in my life that I’ve had absolutely no time to deal with it. Strange as it sounds, I’ve been doing too much stuff after work, and my job is actually sucking most of my life force out of me. I dunno I’ve got to see what I need to do.
I’m continuing to do various things to this place, to the comments section, just adding making it look ok, and then I start with links, it won’t be a finished product I don’t think for another few months as I’ve got to really learn a few more things before I can say that I’m happy with it. It’s ok for now, but I can’t help but keep tweaking it. I’ll probably make some icons because I can :)
Yeah well this is my blog and I’m a bit upset about this. I can’t say I was completely and utterly in love with this book. For a start it didn’t have my favorite characters in it, and it wasn’t really snappy enough for me. The thing is however is that it really was unique in the comic book industry. It was telling the lives of the people who were trying to change the world, in the only way the current world seems to want to change, through money. Forget about fists and wars, it’s all about the money. Not so much the money itself but what people do with it. And I suppose from that point of view it was smart reading. I’ve got two trade paperbacks sitting right next to me. That’s 12 issues, and not a single guest artist, one man dealing with the art and tone of the entire series. Slick as hell, and just generally very well put together.
The actual covers were a collaboration of Dustin Nguyen (the artist) and Rian Hughes. He can be found here Not a bad little site, but his work does truely inspire me in terms of graphic design. An incredibly versatile artist/designer. I’ll hopefully review his book at some point. So this is a pretty crummy time for my collecting habits because I actually looked forward to this book. Oh well, they’ll hopefully revive it at some point in the future and maybe they keep ideas from this one but get a more competent writer to instill a lot of excitement in the series, who knows.
So I just got back from my mini vacation to Nottingham, and what a two day break it was. Cram packed from the word go, and hasn’t calmed down till this very minute that I sit here and type this quick thoughts dump. First off Nottingham Uni has changed a great deal.
I know Athens 2004 will have them supposedly, whether or not this is the case is a completely unknown fact.
As exhilerating as it is to finally get something to work in MT it’s just as frustrating when things don’t really go your way. As such I’ve been trying long and hard to sort out the comments systems. I know hardly anyone will use them, which is fine, but dammit I’m a perfectionist and I’d like to make sure my blog works like clock work for the forseable future. I mean I went for 4 solid months without even touching the blogger template because I was relatively happy with it. In other news I’ve booked my ticket to Nottingham tomorrow. Damn it’s going to be a long weekend, but good at the same time. I’ve had a very relaxing day today, just watching episodes of futurama, sorting out this blog and listening to tunes. Ate too much and generally slobbed. I’ve got to get outta the house by around 7ish, so that I can get to Kings Cross, get my ticket, and my young persons railcard renewed, and hope to god I don’t miss the damn train, in addition I’ve got to get to Nottingham before 11 MAXIMUM so that I’m there without any hickups for the go-karting, damn like I said from the moment go tomorrow is going to be one to remember, second stag night this year, and as far as I can tell it’ll be the second of 4 in total, one of which I might be organising.
As you grow the things you do are obviously different. When I was younger other things were more important to me, and I experienced completely different things, and I’m sure in the years to come my experiences will also evolve.
Well the details to this here blog are starting to come together in a nice way. I’ve got my random image generator at the top there, which means I’ll be adding random images at least 1 a week to the little space, hell I might go mental at one point and put 30 in a week, whatever, I think it’s a cool little feature keeping the site fresh for when I’m busy to update with words and links and whatever. The mechanics of the site still haven’t been sorted out yet, should have them done soon though, it’s not hard, just takes time. Once I’ve finished that I think this blog will have been one of my best sites so far simply because I’ve actually done what was in my head, a rare occurance indeed….
As I was on the train towards Ayesbury, which is in Buckinghamshire, near oxford I realised I hadn’t had a day outside the office since end of January, and that seemed like ages and ages ago, and yet it only really was 2 months ago, I only got paid for my expenses like 2 weeks ago, so strange how time flies by.
I’ve got two absolute days from hell coming up. Very busy at work, and then I can kinda relax for a few hours before going up to Nottingham this weekend for a stag night, and the week after that I’m up near cheltham for Sammy boy, it’s going to be a crazy couple of weeks, very under the gun, will need a break after this, oh yeah and I’ve got to go get a god damn visa so that I can see Alfonso’s wedding, man if I get any design or art done in the next few weeks it’ll be a miracle. Tonight I’ve got to sort out the a logo and probably make this weblog slightly more attractive.
This has been a long time coming. I’ve been building towards this for a while now, and this shows a lot of hard work finally paying off. In the next week I’ll be doing some major tweaks to this place, making it look more and more pro. I’ve had to install netscape navigator onto my pc, and I must say I like it a lot better than iexplorer. The problem is there are a few kinks in the code that I need to sort out for cross browser compatibility. It’s interesting to get there in the end. This moveable type business is harder than I originally thought, but well worth it in the end.
As you might have noticed the templates for the comments and the previous blog entries haven’t been sorted out yet, that’ll come soon enought, part of all the work that’s going into this. On friday this was all a distant dream of actually finishing this off. The reason I say it is because I won’t have to really change this at all. All I’ve got to do is tweak this little puppy every once in a while to keep it fresh. No longer need my blogger account. Like I said before
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHA……
Right this is going to be a busy week ahead of me. In fact the next 10 days are going to be filled with pressure. From work and from outside work in terms of what I’d like to accomplish, the list is scary. Having had my coffee this morning, and a decent 8 hours of sleep, listenning to some decent tunes I think I’m ready to tackle the friggin week. I might have to pop into work this weekend to start finishing off something for the report. It’s something I think I’ll be proud of in the end. Better learn Indesign pretty quickly as well, since I’ve got to do the report in that program. Hmmm, don’t know if that’s such a good idea, but those who try succeed in the end I suppose.
Still haven’t done anything on the tally yet, although I’ve started tackling the various bits and pieces….just nothing to show yet.
The bad guys - The good guys 3 - 0 websites (kaydo, iliosnare, x) 18 - 0 illustrations 1 - 0 font (iliosnare font 1) 1 - 0 logo (ots) 1 - 0 promotional pdf (iliosnare) 1 - 0 graphic novel script (deliverance)
So I got a new computer at work today, and I’ve actually been enjoying work lately, simply because I’ve been doing some artwork there and some cool consulting as well I guess. It’s a buzzing time for me, and everything looks and feels good probably due to the weather. I feel as though I’ve made better friendships with some people, while others I seem to be more and more distant with. It’s strange, I try and yet I don’t seem to be really clicking with people I honestly thought pretty highly of. I guess it’s all part of the world we live in and you move in with your life, and people move on. Strange as it sounds I feel like I’m loosing friends, and gaining other friends from places I didn’t really expect.
I’ve decided to try and buy a new computer for home. God bless this computer I’m typing on. It’s served me amazingly and truely has been a complete and utter workhorse for me, however it’s time to use something that’s exceptionally fast. I can actually afford it right now and I think I’m ready to make the leap to 3D modelling. It’ll be hard but as with anything I think eventually I’ll be good enought to tackle that aspect as well, and then I’ll be ready to take on the design world, and the comic book world.
Life seems to be going well as I say good buy to March and welcome April with open arms.
April hope everyone has a good april, and here’s hoping the world sees a peaceful month, because something tells me the following months are going to turbullent for the international scene, probably since the americans have their elections and their rat bastard ‘leaders’ need to make some noise, and since they seem to have the economy of countries in their grip this is all going to get ugly sometime in July, mark my words…it always happens, and the cattle continue to follow their fearless leaders in the great unknown, as they rape each other from all morals and objective humanity.
A few things I’d like to tackle this April:
Shit busy times ahead of me. Should be a pretty productive month. I can feel it. Iliosnare should go like May 1st. Gives me a good month to come up with everything and then have a massive splash. It’s going to be a hard month, but saticfying in the end I think.
I’m going to keep a tally at the bottom of every blog and every time I update it I’ll see how far I’ve gotten in terms of productivity. I suppose all sorts of extra stuff might come along, but I’ll add those as well, at least I’ll be able to be track what I accomplished this month and what I didn’t bother with. Could be interesting. So far the bad guys are winning…
The bad guys - The good guys 3 - 0 websites (kaydo, iliosnare, x) 18 - 0 illustrations 1 - 0 font (iliosnare font 1) 1 - 0 logo (ots) 1 - 0 promotional pdf (iliosnare) 1 - 0 graphic novel script (deliverance)
So I’m sitting here trying to understand how exactly I should play this whole blog thing out. I mean for a while there I was doing well. I was blogging nearly every day. Not really telling much, just my thoughts what I was feeling that sort of thing. Thing is a lot of my thoughts are my own. They’re personnal and while this does seem like it should be used for these things, don’t really know who reads this, that’s why it’s a public blog. So I guess my next stream of thought is to try and come up with a reason for this here blog. I’ve got loads of thoughts and usually I think about them but never set them down in a coherent fashion. Also I’ve noticed that I actually write less when I’m actually being productive and actually typing things out and actually drawing and designing, and dear god I have been seriously designing these last few weeks. I’ve been learning a great deal of things in the past few weeks, a lot of which you’ll start to see in May. That’s for that major revamp that’s hosted by MT, or mediatemple as they like to be called. Whether or not I get my hosting with them is something I’ll see to in the future. Right now I’m happy with nzwebit. So I think I’ll actually start tweaking up this friggin blog a bit and then maybe finishing the actual interface to the new kaydo site sorted out, which is very literally a friggin image on the main page and the logo I’m going to get on there.
I’ve been riding this massive creative high now for 5 solid days. All the images or most of the images on this site have been tweaked and have a more professional feel, hoewever it’s going to take a lot more work to be honest, because I can see some major short comings with a lot of the work. I suppose these are my learning years, but there is a massive leap between what is on the site and what I’ve got planned for the actually relaunch of this hear site, this blog and the new iliosnare site. It’s going to be a very busy couple fo weeks. I’ve actually gotten 7 images out of my head. I said I’d deal with at least 25 illustrations. I’m sure I’ll go back to many of them and tweak them here and there, just give them more structure than what they currently have. I think this is what sets the good from the mediocre from the shit.
So what the’s the deal with the book, good question. I had a massive rush a few weeks back and now it’s faded on me again. So I’ve got to try and come up with something a bit more of a structured approach to it and actually adhere to it. The problem is I wake up in the morning and the last thing I want to do is sit down and try and do some writing. I guess my drive for a lot of this stuff is wanning, but every once in a while something will come along and wil make me think twice and I’ll be able to get back into it I hope. March is coming to a close and I still haven’t finished the script. That’s pathetic. I’ve done other things in the meantime, but I think as of this weekend I’m going to sit in and just finish EVERYTHING once and for all. Tall order I know but I think it’s time I had a 120 page script sitting next to my bed with my name on it and I should really start to illustrate it. I don’t have much time to go to be honest. I’ve got the paper, so it’s time to take that next step.
I’m not complaining it’s just that I wake up and I honestly don’t feel refreshed sometimes, or ready to do some work early in the morning, it’s strange I used to love it, and used to get a lot done, now I’ve got to be in a certain way. Hmm dunno, hopefully I’ll actually snap out of it. Now to choose what to wear, god I hate that routine, every day I have to think of something I can up on, work clothes ethics piss me off…
How to create an identity in a weekend. I’ve been working furiously these past few days trying to set things up. I’ve hit walls, cars whatever along the way. That said I’ve achieved something pretty special to me at least. I’ve been able all these things I’ve learnt in design and whatnot to come up with something unique that shows off my work.
This place will be converted to my little section of work dedicated to my animated project, while iliosnare will hold my design aspects of life. I’m not sure where to insert the blog to be honest. I know I want a blog but I don’t think it’s really appropriate for iliosnare. If I’m going to take this seriously, which I am I think it would be advisable to try and come up with a seperate url for all my thoughts and have them written down in an honest to god proper looking blog. Have some fun with it really. Import all these posts into the archives and start sorting the plae out.
Lots of work, really not a lot of time. I’ve got a pretty quiet week ahead of me thankfully, nothing really planned except for a birthday this saturday which could be fun, and 2 basketball games, hope my group meeting doesn’t run after 8, since I’ve got the game at nine and I’ll probably need some time to get there.
I’ve been doing a lot of research these past few days into a little major redesign of the place. Hey it has to stay fresh for me, and I was reading this article about the main guy from cubancouncil and he was saying that his personnal portfolio/website keeps getting changed nearly on a daily basis since he’s never really happy with it, and here I thought I was the only one with this problem.
The thing is I have to concetrate on other aspects as well so I’m going to do this redesign and won’t think about it until much later on in the game. Maybe 1st of May for the relaunch. I’m going to have to start thinking with my brother about the little idea that we’ve got brewing. It’s going to be a busy few months in terms of design and art I can tell so this place might become really rich with stuff at some point. I’ve also reinstalled moveable type, and since I’ve actually found out how the thing actually works I might be able to start making it look nice and might even replace this here blog. Trust me the moveable type blog is a lot more friendly and will in general look much better and has a lot more features.
So I’ve been thinking about updates and after reading this interview with the main guy from cuban council I can rest assured that I’m not alone in never being happy with my actual website ever. I will always want to keep tinkering around with it. I’ve got a busy weekend in front of me. I’ve got loads to do and get done I guess this is a good thing and I walk into March full of vital energy. God I can’t believe it’s March already.
I’ve been thinking about my artwork and design work a lot more lately. I’ve got a massive presentation to do in flash which I’m really looking forward to, and I’ve got a great deal of artwork and writing to get done, while visiting a few friends and actually enjoying my weekend, it’s going to be a busy one I can tell you that much.
Have to learn how to play around with moveable type as well, and start actually building this friggin thing up, import all my posts from blogger that sort of thing….
I love them. When it’s just you and someone else, and they tell you something personnal because they trust you, they know you won’t betray their words. I’ve been having a few one to ones lately and I think I prefer these times 1000 times better than any other form of ‘entertainment’. It’s true I love it because you get a feel that the other person knows you and you get a better understanding of that person as well.
Socially this week has been very good. Which is why not much work has been done on other things, basically for something to be good, the other has to give really, and that’s pretty annoying I find, however that’s life really. I’m ok about that, it’s just that I’ve forgotten to buy paper 3 days in a row and I didn’t go to the comic book store yesterday which is a big thing for me. I guess it’s because I’m not going well with money this month, a few things have been taken out of my account and left me poor.
I’ve been reading again, which is brilliant. It’s called ‘A History of the Middle East’ and it’s a very well informed well written book. It’s mainly historical facts without too much personal commentary and bias so you get a ‘flavour’ of what went on and what where the main events to shape the middle eastern region. Who fucked who and why. It’s an incredible read and it really shows how much politics are a crazy bitch and for anyone to try and go into it would have to either be a complete bastard. There are no genuine politicos. Even if they started off with godd intentions they ended up being despots and dictators, even in the so called democracies of the world.
Downloaded Evenescence, Fallen. Some of it is a bit rubbish, but in general it’s been a while since I’ve actually gotten into a female led band. I suppose I got bored of listenening to the rubbish ads on live365. Launch just isn’t cutting edge enough so there you go really.
I have had time to reinstall moveable type, but it’s got loads of bugs and it’s really pissing me off. So I might reinstall it and see where we go from there. Shouldn’t really take all that long to reinstall the thing really. I’ll probably do it this weekend and most probably update the site intro page, and then over the course of the next weeks update kaydo.net to something more.
So this is basically the first step for me using everything I have in terms of resourses at my disposal. I’m doing something special to me. My thoughts and ideas continue. This time I’m consolidating everything right here and now, in this little space before me.
Had a seriously funny lunch today, nothing I could really talk about here, since it would all be in the realm of ‘you had to be there’. One funny moment I thought that was done well however was when we got talking about Rambo, G mentioned that he’s heard Rambo 4 and Rocky 6 are both coming out. I countered that by saying that he should really just give up and go into something completely different like politics (wink to Arnold) and then Petra goes, ‘yeah because then Arnold can loose the next election and go, ‘I’LLL BEEE BAAACKKK’ :)
Oh shut up, you had to be there.
I think I’m going to be using one of these blogs as a comic book review blog. I have a lot of reviewing to do, and since I’m pretty opinionated anyway this should be good for recommendations etc. I’ll include links galore and build it so that I can have a whole bunch of things that get regularly updated. This way it’ll be a resource of sorts. I guess I should start with Alan Moore’s Supreme because that’s the last good book I’ve read in a while. Damn Moore does it to me every single time, even with a character as lame as supreme he’s made him exciting and just damn good fun, and in 12 issues I know soo much of his past and he created his past within those 12 issues. I’ve got to get into this mode a lot more and start posting loads of smaller images because people like that sort of thing in articles. Makes it much more fun.
Tell you what I’m pretty glad to get February and all it’s leap year poncy rubbish attitude out of the way. Really it had some highlights but generally I regard it as one of the rubbish months this year. I must say that I can’t believe that it’s March already. I new years, Secondment and now a month in a new group have all passed me by. Any closer to my goals this year? Hmm VERY slightly, but it’s painful. The good news is I’ve finally found out how much roughly it’ll cost me to self publish my very own black and white graphic novel, as an indie creator. How much? Roughly $4000. A lot you think? If I actually sell out I’m making a profit which I never thought I’d do. So I suppose if the cafepress way doesn’t pan out for whatever reason, then I’ll need to save around 2500 quid and take that plunge. Scary shit but I suppose you’ve got to take that leap of faith with you work, and basically promote the living daylights out of it. Fliers to retailers, to bookstores, appearances in the cities you’re familiar with. It’s strange to think that in a year’s time I might actually be going through all that rubbish, hell I probably won’t but I can dream, and you can get to seem me succeed or fail as the case may be…
I’ve really never gotten into the online radio station thing to be honest, but I know for a fact I’ll probably start enjoying this a lot more, from now on. The link? www.live365.com you should click on alternative, and there are a few to choose from, my personal favorite is mescino radio which is also the editors pick, hey what can I say I still like the alternative side of things. I’ve been well out of it, so hopefully I’ll actually start to click with a few new bands. I’ve already heard on I like, www.saliva.com got a pretty cool website, not the most amazing, but pretty cool.
Also if you’re looking for some mp3 downloads on rare smashing pumpkins pieces, then you need to go to the download section of www.billy-corgan.com .
Talk about links galore. Hey if you were bored that should occupy you for a few minutes.
Story is going AMAZINGLY. Will I hit the February deadline? A week ago I’d have laughed in your face. Now I’m not all that sure it’s an unachievable dream. Things have seriously clicked today and I’ve even taken my sketches and done something with them, I’ve rewritten loads of the original script that I’ve had to retool due to being in a completely different state of mind. I’m going to have to add a download section on my site, for wallpapers. I think lots of people like that sort of thing actually. Decent wallpaper that’s fun is something I think people lack a lot of. Hmm might get to work as well.
I’ve also gotten a new idea for my blog as well, since I’ve had a cool update from my web hosting people. So I can actually play around with loads of new toys on my server space. Hmm maybe in the next week or so, although I really doubt it because it seems to be a pretty busy week ahead of me.
So here I am sitting down after a long day, I’ve been to the hype gallery again and actually picked up Happiness Appears. It’s amazing in size (A0) which is HUGE and although it’s mainly white I think it was the right thing to do at the time. Who knows if they do it again next year I might actually do a piece that actually might help me promote myself instead of something that’s clearly sentimental in value. HIndsight is twenty twenty but you should never regrett your actions and should strive forward to actually better yourself and improve the way you act to the people around you. To that extent I’m glad for all my friends and I’m glad for every one’s health that’s around me.
I’m glad I’ve got a method of expression and while it’s slow and progress is frustrating to say the least, at least it exists all these years after school, after University and I know that I will get published at some point, whether it’s completely self-published or actually more professional is obviously yet to be seen, but if you’ve got something that’s burning a hole in your mind and causing you to loose sleep, you know things will happen. I’m not going out tonight, last two weeks have been pretty hardcore for going out so I think I’ll take it easy tonight, probably do some writing, might even call a few people if I’m feeling really crazy :) Take care all.
I’ve sat down and gone through all my stories that are in one part or another of development. It’s strange but they’re all at a progressive stage like 60 odd pages in, and there is loads of parts that I know how to expand upon, it’s just that I’ve not really thought about the time, etc. I think I’ve really got to put the rubbish that was february behind me and tackle the new month in earnest. I suppose lots of people kind of coast through the year, and while I’ve also done this in the past I’m pretty determind to make something of this year.
I’ve decided that the best call of action is to hone my art skills in the coming year, really get to grips with all the points I feel I falter on, work on those aspects long and hard. This way I won’t feel inadequate to tackle the stories that I will have written by the END of the year. That’s a lot of stories, but hey if I’ve got quiet a few scripts written and ready to go in one form or another, then I’ll at least have most of my ideas down on paper. Throughout the year I’ll then concentrate on the character sketches and building the worlds I want these characters to inhabit. At the end of the year I’ll have done the leg work for many of the stories.
While I won’t have actually finished a single book fully, I’ll have moved forward in terms of research and plot and dialogue and basically the scripts and sketches will have been done.
It’s ambitious but I think it’s the way I’ve got to approach this. Once I’ve got the scripts done then it’s a matter of choosing which ones I’d like to tackle first. Who know how I feel about this idea tomorrow, but right now at this point in my life I’m pretty content to trying my best to achieve a better March because February was pure garbage from every concievable point of view.
As the song goes ….‘things can only get better….’ (yeah forget the rest of that verse, it doesn’t apply here)
Ignore me time and time again as I work my life to a halt.
Ignore me forever and touch the sea of my dreams.
See me through life’s hotel and my thoughts torn aside.
Dare to ignore me once more and I’ll rip your heart out. Spare me your sweetness and spend the rest of the hour.
Ignore me once
Ignore me twice
Ignore me never again and feel my cold stare shine through
Well I just read the most shocking thing, well for me at least. If you go over to www.billycorgan.com you can read who broke the smashing pumpkins up. Now while this might not mean a lot to many people, it means the world to me, simply put the pumpkins where and still are the greatest band for me. No other group of people have produced so much music that has given me such a range of emotions within 1 hour. I’ve seen them live and that was for my 21st birthday I have every single, album, soundtrack I could get my hands on. In essence I’m a lifelong fan. I’ve even started sorting out cover artwork for an internet album they released 2 years ago. Sad news for me I suppose but just reading the blog made me think how completely crap billy must have felt. I suppose many times you’ve got to walk away from the crutch you call your friends and tackle things in a solo effort. Does this apply to me right now? Not really, I’ve always been a loner, the few times I’ve tried to rely on friends or whatever I’ve been disapointed. Which is why I continue to do what I do in a solo effort.
How’s the story going. Man it’s not, which is not good, however I’ve developed the style that I’ll be using to draw this thing, which I suppose is a start. It’s going to be using traditional japanese comics methods, this is the main character. This is a sketch and it’s only intended to show the style that I’ll be using, it’ll get more detailed and more refined as time goes by I’m sure, but at this time I can actually see this working out. I’ve also highlighted the zipatone effect that I’ll be using. It’s not gray, it’s still black, only old fashioned. BIG difference, but so much nicer I feel.
I’ve only got like 14 days to try and finish this script. Even if I don’t actually make the book I’ll have finished the script. I’ll have finished something I started.
I’ve been doing a lot of design work lately. I’ve actually done three wallpapers that I’ll try and put up at some point, but it’s just that my site isn’t really geared up for that at this point. I’m working on making it design oriented, a REAL portfolio, but I’ve been busy. Wish there where more hours in the day, and more time to actually be productive.
It’s true, and it should make your life better as well. Although I generally never listen to Arabic music, I’ve finally stumbled upon a little factoid that I never thought would happen. When I was much younger there was always arabic music blaring in the background. I was too young to have my own musical taste at the time and as such I would listen to anything my mother used to put on the actual tape player. There’s even a tape, don’t know if we actually have it, where I started fucking around with the tape, and my mother slapped me on the hand. Obviously I’d already pressed record, and in the most embaressing way now, I told my mother off for ‘upsetting me’. It one of those moments where you’re reminded off constantly when friends of the famil come over.
The thing is what made me remember this story is the fact that I’ve been listening to a busker. This man is from Iran and he was playing on the Greek equivalent of Oxford Street. He’s there and he’s making the most amazing sound on his little Shadour. The music rang to the sky and everyone walking down that street must have felt this tingle in the back of their necks. He was unparalleled in talent. And my parent bought his CD off him, which I’ve stolen off them. He does a few covers of some absolute classics, and one of those was a song that my mother played many times when I was younger and when we went on drives in the car.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m nostalgic to arabic music, classic arabic music, because it reminds me of my childhood and gives me a feeling of days long gone, but never forgotten.
My week has gotten better, here’s a sketch I did that I’m working on with my brother.
What a shit week. I’ve never been so happy to see friday in my life. What a rubbish rubbish week. Damn didn’t think lots of things could phase me you see. I’m generally overly optmistic about life in general. Sometimes however I just give up and honestly can’t be bothered to see the bright side of things. I’m really unsure about soo many things in my life right now it’s unreal.
I’ve got stories that don’t want to get written. Art that doesn’t want to get drawn and ideas that don’t ever want to come true. And I’m not getting any younger. This I suppose is what it feels like to be in a real glut of things. It’s like every little thing can really begin to annoy you and you feel a greater sting of things.
Every morning the only reason I get up with a perk in my step and a jump in my bones is because of my dreams and any work I’ve been up to. I will wake up with the specific purpose of actually seeing this masterpiece or mastershit I’ve created and how I can better it. How I can make it work. How I can fix it. That’s how I get up in the morning. It’s nothing to do with diet. It’s nothing to do with chemistry and everything to do with my mind. I wake up even though it’s painful sometimes to complete something I started work on.
I haven’t felt that for nearly a week now. While I understand that it’s not something that should come every day, to me, in order to give meaning to my life it does. Even if it’s something as trivial as a smile from someone or a nice word from someone, or even if I had the most amazing coffee this one day, that’s what makes me happy. I could care less about flash cars and other such rubbish. Some people consume, others create.
It’s strange how the world makes you loose hope for yourself, hope for the world and hope for everything that you thought should be dear to everyone. I guess this isn’t a normal blog now that I think about it. It’s my personal diary. It’s my thoughts broadcast on the internet where no-one except a few friends I’ve told about the site and other designers might stumble across it. Does it serve a purpose? It’s the only way right now for me to calm myself from the world around me and all the decedance I see around me every single day.
What a shit week.
Well I’ve been thinking about this a lot more lately. Things have been set into motion with regards to what I want to do with this place. The website will probably get a major facelift in the coming months, not because I don’t like it, but because it’s reason for existance will have changed. When you design a website it’s for a purpose, that purpose will hopefully have shifted in the coming months.
I will start thinking seriously about sorting out the online comic/portfolio aspect to the forefront, and this blog will be essential as it’s something I’m having a lot of fun with. It’s my personal diary. I don’t expect anyone to care about it right now but I think it’s for me to braindump everything.
Every wished you had the time? The time to this, that or the other? Every wonder what your life would be like?
If only I had the times…I’m off to work.
That’s how I feel right now. Honestly I don’t expect to make much sense, but I’ll probably read these thoughts a few years from now and either smile or look at myself in a whole new light. I suppose I’m going to actually start using my thoughts section as a pathway to everything I want to say and feel. Sometime it’ll be boring other times it’ll bring me closer to finding a way in my life.
Currently I’m in a low phase of my life. I was over the moon 2 weeks ago, everything was going my way, but I’m not in the correct frame of mind these two past weeks. I guess changing groups has had a serious impact on me. I’ve met some nice people but it’s going to be a long a hard struggle to get to the way I was in the old group. I know this, it’s part of life, but it’s demoralising in any case. I understand the neccesity for it, but I can’t justify it to myself right now.
Even though my piece is in the hype gallery I’ve had no e-mails regarding he piece. In hindsight maybe I should have worked on something truely dynamic and then put it up. I guess I was blinded by emotions and when trying to be a professional you’ve really got to set your emotions to one side and tackle the situation at hand. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I guess you live and learn in life. Sometime things go correctly and sometimes they really don’t.
How’s the story coming along you ask? Don’t; because it’s not. I’m in a glut right now and I know I’m just feeling a slight sting, but it’s one of those things that takes time. I’ve got the ideas in my head but I can’t seem to sit myself down and just get on with it. I guess that is the problem 90% of the time with writing a story, your motivation and raison d’etre is no longer as viable and vibrant in your mind, and so you loose the steam with which you came into it, in the very begining.
While January was a creative high, and 2004 looked more bright than ever, Febrary has started of to an abismal start. Hell I can’t even be bothered to read comics right now. I can’t be bothered to finish off the third hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, I can’t be bothered to buy any music and I can’t be bothered to draw anything worth while.
I wish I could go to sleep for a few months, and wake up one day and have the book written and drawn, the website as funky as I’d like it to be, and my dreams to have been touched by reality.
I’m getting the feeling I dream a lot and talk a lot and for some reason I just don’t act on what I say, and I end up disappointing myself.
Ever had one of those days, one of those weeks, one of those months?
This is one of them for me.
Well it’s been one year since I started building websites on my own. I’ve learnt a great deal in the time inbetween. I’m happy to say that I’ve actually got roughly 4 websites I’m currently in the talking stage of designing them. It’s actually a serious range of topics which is pretty nice to have. That portfolio section will be getting bigger faster, sooner than I thought.
Going down to Brick Lane today to see my piece in the gallery. I’ll hopefully get some friends down there tommorow so that I can grab a few pictures and what not. Should be interesting if nothing else, and I should get a massive geek feeling once I’ve actually seen my drawing hanging up there, for everyone to see.
It’s an important day for me. How this day goes will probably confirm my happiness to a certain degree for the months to come. I won’t be melodramatic and say years, but a few months at least.
Played basketball today after something like a month and a half. The longest I’ve ever gone without proper exercise and I tell you what I’m going to feel it tomorrow for sure. It was damn worth it though, and I think it’ll be damn good to get into it again, although it’s one of those things that you leave for a while and you really have to work hard to get anything bad. I wasn’t a complete embaressment to my team,…complete being the operative word here.
Last season of friends on E4 tonight. Will be pretty sad seeing them go, although it’s about time. It’s turned more soap opera than just stupid light hearted entertainment towards the end but I guess after 10 years you’re going to struggle to bring in new things to the table. That’s why I kinda like the idea that Smallville might end at the end of this year, it’s third season, god I hope so, not because I don’t like it, but because I actually do, and if there’s one thing I’ve understood in life, is leave when you’re at the top of your game, makes you more of a legend, more durable, and hopefully you actually can stand the test of time.
Well I’ve actually picked up my pencil after an absence of way too long. What I find really amazing about the whole experience is how I seem to not have lost anything in the time between the drawings, not only that but I can actually see more speed in my work, and more accuracy. Oh sure I’m still making some terrible mistakes, but as my own worst critic I think I’m finding a few more things to actually like than hate, which is pretty rare really. Thinking about it, sometime this year marks 10 years since I started off on this dream of mine. I’m closer 10 years later, although I’ve taken one hell of a detour, and to a certain extent it was necessary for me to see things and experience things I might not have experienced otherwise. I’ll be posting the first teaser image to my book in due course, I actually have a few ideas lurking in my head.
In the meanwhile to see a site that I would like to rival in terms of the graphic novel counterpart (he’s making an animated movie), go to www.rustboy.com seriously it’s an amazing accomplishment. I’d love to buy the book, but it’s pretty pricey even for me; usually I’m the prime target for that sort of thing. I suppose when I’ve got a few more quids knocking about in my bank account, or hell my birthday’s only 8 months away, anyone interested in getting me something early, I’ll love you forever.
Another lebanon photo for your viewing pleasure.
Well it’s been a good break actually thinking about it. I’ve had around a month to re-energise my batteries and think about my book from a fresh perspective. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I think I should be able to actually crack on with it sometime soon.
My brother is complaining that my blog isn’t colurful enough, no photos or whatever, which I guess he’s right about, so for a while I’ll actuall post some sketches on the blog page just for fun. Eventually they’ll be placed in the portfolio section. Before that happens here’s a photo I took while on holiday in Lebanon. That’s what I miss living in london, the beautiful sunsets…sounds corny but soo true.
Tell you what, I’ve done it. I’ve finished all the technical aspects of the site. It took a while but dammit I’ve uses 4images for the portfolio collection, I’ve used blogger for the thoughts section. Don’t even know the name of the site I’m using for those comments. My newsletter is from notifylist.com. It’s all free and it’s all great.
From now on it’s all going to be just simple tweaks to the site here and there, and just more artwork and thoughts being blasted onto the site. Do please send me any problems that you see in the coding, since my computer will cache everything and I don’t really have the most accurate of pictures for this site as it appears to everyone else.
First day back in the office. I’m glad to be back, although I did get annoyed with the changing of my PC since all my settings got screwed. Oh well.
And yesterday was one of them. Apart from the splitting headache at the end of the day it was a pretty good day. I was down brick lane taking my cd to be printed at the hype gallery. So that went down well, it’ll hopefully be up on Tuesday and for a week, which means I better start actually sorting out this place making it slightly more designy and adding some more things here and there. When you see it you’ll understand why, I think it’ll make the place look tighter.
As I was walking back I passed by the mosque on brick lane and that’s when the prayer calls had started, and I got this massive tingle in the back of my neck, because here I was in London and there was the prayer call, so amazing for me because it reminded me of home even for those brief few seconds.
Went into the office and saw everyone again which I must say was really nice, I actually missed quiet a few people. Just chilling with the guys and gals of the office. It’s good to have this secondment over and done with. It was good while it lasted but I’ve decided I’m not a site engineer. Some people can handle it, I’m not of the same mould shall we say. Although the guys on site were well funny, I think I’m a clean environment kind of person.
Well I’m standing in front of the hype gallery on Brick lane and I actually got very nervous. I mean seriously I got very nervous about what I was planning on doing. It’s pretty exciting stuff for me, but this is where my promotion starts I guess. Hey 1 month in and I’ll hopefully have something in a gallery down central london. I’ll hopefully have some pictures up here pretty soon of the place, if I can actually get a camera down there on Friday. I think that’s when I’ll be taking my drawings down. Not really sure. Will give me a chance to HYPE it out in the office and around the place I guess.
Also I’m not the only one with the idea to start a blog in January, Mr. Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins fame is doing his blog as well, which is cool. You can view it right here www.billycorgan.com He’s going solo and writing about all sorts of random things. Didn’t realise he liked ‘pro’ wrestling so much, hmmm I guess even the best of us have vices or weakesses :).
Well it’s on the front of the site so it’s no secret that my piece was accepted to the hypegallery.com website. I’m going down there tomorrow to see if I will actually be able to get it into the gallery. It’s the same place where Bodyworlds was held last year. Lots more submissions to the site so I don’t know. It had 150 last night, tonight it’s got over 250 entries. Even if my picture gets up there, how long will it actually stay up there? I’m personally hoping for one week. I’ve got to start the invitations and also I need to start sorting out the basketball strips. Hmm guess I’ll be busy as all hell tomorrow, but I suppose everything hard in life will be worth it in the end.
Saw BIG FISH. All I can say is that it was my favorite Tim Burton movie. I mean seriously this thing is so well put together, and the story so amazingly uplifting I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Some people seriously didn’t get the movie. I could explain but to be honest I’d spoil it for some people and I’d rather not. But needless to say the guy spells it out for everyone in the movie, has the character say the words out loud and still I heard people saying the exact opposite. Ahh well.
Another thing I noticed was the fact that the music was not inspiring, or more like, it didn’t grab me. I have one person to fault here, and that’s tarantino. I mean he does magic with the soundtrack that the songs he chooses are unmistakably from his movie, you hear that song a few years later straight away you think of his movie, and that is a talent that very very few movie makers have actually achieved.
I’ve had the MOST AMAZING DAY today. Apart from meeting Lee who’s a pretty cool guy and visiting a new place in the english country, apart from going to the Tate Modern and actually seeing some real DALI apart from seeing Sam again after a while which is nice, I had the most amazing surprise when I got back. Can I talk about it? Well not just yet I’ve got a lot of pre-preperation to deal with, but believe me when I’m finished, and if you know me you’ll hear about it, and all going well even get an invitation,…now how omnious is that?
Follow the link here. As far as I can tell I’ll hopefully be featured on the site at some point. This is all part of the promotion I’ve been building towards. Not really sure if they’ll accept the piece, if they do, then I’ll definitely try and get it down there so it’s in the gallery. We’ll see to be honest. I’m hopeful fingers crossed and all that. I’m not going to tell you which piece I’ve submitted but it’s a good one, and yes it can be found in the gallery section.
Been going crazy drawing things in this new sketch pad I bought from WHSmith the other day. It’s like lots of girls swear by Boots and how AMAZING it is. Well to a certain extent I feel the same about WHSmith, sure it’s not the greatest place in the world, but their art stuff is pretty cool, they got a decent selection of stationary and their magazine collection is brilliant.
Just finished Book 12 of Blade of the Immortal. I was soo hyped to read it I sat down and read everything from Book 6 till now. Damn that is one VIOLENT comic. I mean seriously nothing you could ever possibly read or watch comes close to this comic in terms of shear violence. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t just about gore. It’s usually the implied violence than what is shown but many times it’s what is shown. And yet this is a series that can make you smile like you’ve never smiled before at a book. It develops the characters so you understand them and can usually hear them in your head, and you actually feel for them. It’s a modern classic in Japan and America having won all the relevant awards. I’ll be writing some serious reviews pretty soon of the books, but that’s what’s been on my reading list for the past week.
Discovered this amazing track on the Godzilla soundtrack by Rage Against the Machine. If you like these guys go download No Shelter. Seriously one of their better songs…EVER.
New image in the main page also means I’ve completed my work for the time being on the site. It’s taken me a little over 3 weeks to complete it. I’ve already got ideas that I want to put in for the february edition. Designwise it’ll probably stay the same, I mean generally in terms of the navigation and how things are presented, but the graphics and probably the colours will change from month to month. It keeps me fresh and constantly working on something different.
So I say this again, welcome to kaydo. Please enjoy your visit, come again soon :)
Now I know what the Re stands for. Apparently right, there are insurance companies that insure insurance companies, enter the re part of Swiss Re. So who care right? Well I’ve started my mini secondment in the new London headquarters for Swiss Re, in the Gherkin, just off Liverpool St. I’ve got to say it’s pretty damn impressive building if you view it from the bottom. It’s very unique and a true feat of structural engineering. Practically it’s bollocks, but the view is truly magnificent from the 30th floor, and there are another like 14 floors above that! What’s nice is that the top floors or some of those are going to be restaurants, weird but I can seriously seeing it working out in the end.
Wanna see the building I’m talking about? Click here
Right at the bottom you’ll see our name down there, we did the structure :).
Well if you’ve ventured over to the portfolio section you’ll have noticed it’s finally gone online. It’s taken me 3 weeks to get to this stage in the site, and I’m thinking it’ll take me another week to have the site completed. Rather than have this thing come out all at once I’ve been slowly building it up piece by piece and various people have had the chance to see it through it’s different stages. It will constantly evolve from month to month, although the major parts have been done and dusted now all that’s left is to actually maintain this section and start some actual promotion.
Here I was minding my own business and I thought I had it cracked. I knew what I was going to be installing. And I got it all wrong. I didn’t need movable type. This is like blogger only it’s installed onto your website directly, no need to link externally. I’m pretty annoyed as I lost like at least 3 days learning a whole bunch of stuff that ultimately really didn’t come in handy.
The good news, and believe me this is good news is that my portfolio section is coming out sooner than later, the bad news is that I need to sort out this blog page through blogger direct. Although movable type is pretty powerful it only took 3 days for me to get pretty annoyed with it. I suppose you live and learn and hey it’s something else I can say I dabbled in and actually got working.
The new portfolio section will allow everyone to post comments underneath the artwork. Neat little trick and I can update the damn thing pretty quickly which is also a plus, now all I have to do is actually put it all together.
So there I was loving my new site, I’d actually managed to do it, I’d created the site and the artwork and I knew how I was going to sort out everything else, then I thought, no I’m going to add comments to the portfolio section. Ooops, that means I’m going to have to learn php and mysql and sort out all sorts of things. Arghh, and you all know what makes the situation worse don’t you? I CAN’T LET IT GO. I have to sort it out, which means a learning curve of sorts.
The temporary portfolio section will be up sometime tomorrow I would guess, but that and this crazy blog page will most definitely be changing sometime in the coming month. Could be end of the week could be end of the month. But it’ll be much more interactive and a lot more fun for me I think.
Sometimes I wish I just didn’t have to come up with any ideas… ever. Speaking of ideas story is actually going ok. Not so much in terms of page by page description but over ARC description seems to be going in the correct direction. Again that has to be finished by the end of the month, and I’m roughly half way through. Better get cracking really.
It’s times like this I wish I was a massive celebrity; where me updating my site and actually getting my ass down and sorting out some new art and animation would get people excited, but alas those days are far away in the distance, I kinda see them although they’re soo far away I could very well be mistaken. I’d probably also have a launch party. I’ll probably organise something for when the book actually gets released, but that’s another story for another time.
After everything is said and done this is pretty spot on to the way I imagined it. I thought I wasn’t going to make it really. I set myself a deadline of 1 week to sort the place out satisfactorily and well I think to a certain extent I have achieved that goal. Didn’t spend too much time on it which is great so I suppose I’m just getting better at putting these websites together I suppose. 3 weeks from now marks 1 year of k1a2.com, sadly as you can see the URL will be changing shortly to something more funky and easy to remember, kaydo.net will be born from the ashes and will hopefully usher a new and improved online presence with loads of things actually going on.
opi8.com is one avenue I’ll try and ‘publish’ my story that I’m working on to drum up a bit of interest. I’ll have to start doing the rounds at the various graphic design resource websites and try some actual promotion for a change. This is the birth of the next phase of my life. I’m half way into my second five year plan and January 2004 seems to be a mighty promising one at that.
Truly it’s all about how you present the work that makes it appealing. With a few clever little tricks I’ve been able to transform a few of my old pieces of art into really funky stuff right now. The site should hopefully launch sometime this weekend, but I’m not sure I’ve got a lot of catching up with my book. I’ve got a few ideas to taking the story forward. The January piece of the site needs to be completed and a great deal of Flash needs to be done as well.
Hmm plus I’ve just been reading some absolutely brilliant comics. I mean it hasn’t been this good in a while. I’ve got loads of books I haven’t read but some of this stuff is seriously amazing, that I’ve skipped some stuff I bought a while back that I do want to read just so that I can get to this stuff. I’ll be writing reviews at some point, hopefully even get a lot of reviews going on.
Also say the most AMAZING trailer for a sci-fi movie coming out in March in France that made me smile in the same way,…God I can’t remember the last time I got excited about a sci fi movie, bear in mind this is based on a graphic novel by a French artist/writer WHO is also DIRECTING/WRITING this feature. You can download the trailer here. Believe me it’s well worth the 1.48megs. It’s the way a trailer should be done. Nothing is said about the actual story, but the images are truly ASTOUNDING.
Tell you what I haven’t had this much fun creating a website in god knows how long,… probably never. The reason is pretty simple, I’ve learnt a whole bunch of tricks in the past year and I’m trying very hard to implement them as best I can. I mean sure you keep getting all sorts of news aspects of web design coming up but at least I’m slightly more confident that I can get some sort of grips on them. I still haven’t created a dynamic website, hell this blog is the closest thing to actually getting a dynamic aspect going on any website. Sure I’ve included templates, and liquid design and flash animation and smaller jpegs and giffs and crazy preloaders. It’s all great fun when it comes together. I’ve got to start making a list of websites this has to be submitted to. There are loads of websites out there for design/graphic resources, better start trying.
Saw this thought hmm, nothing like the comics, although you’ve got to love Halle Berry. First she bears everything for all to see for a massive amount of money (swordfish, 150,000 for that scene alone, you know what I’m talking about). She then get’s an Oscar and then she plays Storm in the X-men 2 (doing little much this time, again). So she follows this up with Catwoman. Not sure if this is going to be any good to be honest. You can have a look and see what I mean if you click here.
Also finally decided on a name for the new site. It’s going to be launched pretty soon as k1a2.com expires on the 2nd of February, can’t believe an entire year has passed since this site went live. It’s had 3 major updates happen to it in that time, not much in terms of art to show for it but that is going to change, as I’ve got an amazing idea. Site progress going well, could write a book, how to create a website in 7 days…….the hard way.
I’m not spilling any beans until I actually get down to doing the necessary work towards it though.
Just finished reading the sequel to the Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, thank god I’ve got part 3 right next to me. I love this series, thing is I’ll probably finish the final three books in like a few weeks, then what? These characters are brilliant, and it seems like such a shame that they’ll never be used ever again, I suppose since I’ve not seen the tv series or heard the radio show or even read the comic (yeah I know sometimes I surprise even myself) that I’ve got those to look forward to. Still I think it would make a brilliantly funny Sci-fi movie, something like Galaxy Quest, just completely brilliant, or as my box says, Almost Brilliant. It’s funny if you’ve read the first 100 pages of the first book, and since it’s a pretty damn thin book 200 pages a book, you might as well read the rest, then you’re hooked.
I’ve got some brilliant looking effects to start hammering out on the site sometime this week, it just takes hours and right now I’m pretty busy with my secondment as I’ve got to commute like 2 hours a day which is a major pain in the ass.
Oh yeah download Clint Martell’s brilliant soundtrack for Reqiuem for a Dream, the main tune is soo good Peter Jackson (of LOTR fame) had the man Re-gig the song and it’s the second part of the Two Towers trailer, truly brilliant stuff, in the same vein as Craig Armstrong.
Truth be told I’ve been thinking about the new site all day and how to implement a few things that I really wanted to do with it. I’m glad I worked out frames earlier today so I’ll hopefully be incorporating some clever little flash bits and pieces pretty soon, once I get some more artwork done…which reminds me that I have to write some more of my script before it’s February and I’m nowhere to the finish line. Hmmm, early starts.
Also I’ll be posting my thoughts about 2003 in review pretty soon. It’ll be a monster I promise so please bear this in mind when reading it.
Woke up this morning without much of a plan. Usually my sundays are filled with something to do. Today however I wanted a small break from the constant thought that I’ve engulfed myself into the past 2 weeks. This is all due to my book. I have a new found appreciation for well written stories in whatever form they may come. It’s really hard work getting a 150 page graphic novel written. Am I close to the mark? No way. I’ve gotten 40 pages done. 2 weeks 40 pages. This I might add is the third draft. Oh yeas, I’ve got another 2 drafts one which reached a total of 55 pages written and I just scrapped it there and then. Didn’t think twice although had an unbelievable weekend trying to not call myself a complete and utter failure.
The work however will speak for itself, as the story I’ve got now is a lot tighter. What makes me wonder is that I know for a fact that the story will twist and change and evolve into something much more in the weeks to come. It will be better the more I think about it the more I analyse it. So I’m not too upset about the fact that I didn’t meet my deadline. I always blow deadlines anyway.
My next headache came in the form of my discared website that’s been sitting there doing nothing for a while now. Ive been pretty bad for it the last couple of months, but hopefully that should all change in the coming weeks.
I must say I’m pretty proud of how quickly I was able to whip this site together, hell I only thought about sorting out a blog earlier this morning, a true testament to the greatness that is blogger.
When I woke up this morning I didn’t have a blog. Now I do. It’s going to change a great deal in the days to come as I’ve only started scratching the surface of this thing, but here’s hoping it’s a fun experience.
The freqency with which I handle this is all dependant on a few things. Currently I’ve been writing my story and the cogs have been set in motion that will hopefully get it published later on this year. For those that know me, understand what this means to me, I suppose it’s also clear now why I had to learn web design since this is going to be a predominantly web based promotional effort.
Welcome to the start of my dreams becoming a reality. Welcome to my first year actively trying to get published.